Time of the Apes |
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Japan / USA • 1987 • 97m •
  • Directed by: Kiyo Sumi Fukazawa, Atsuo Okunaka. • Starring: Reiko Tokunaga, Hiroko Saito, Masaaki Kaji, Hitoshi Ômae, Tetsuya Ushio, Baku Hatakeyama, Kazue Takita, Noboru Nakaya, Barbara Barnes, Stacey Gregg, Constantine Gregory, Garrick Hagon, Hiroyuki Kawase. • Music by: Toshiaki Tsushima.     A scientist and two kids cryogenically freeze themselves. Several thousand years later, they are revived in a strange future where monkeys live as humans and where the only human left is Gono, some sort of hunter. With a vengeful monkey and the rest of the ape government on their tail, the gang must find a way to get home.
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Review:
Mr. Frank, you got off easy. You deserved every horrible thing they said about your imports, and far, far worse.
Take "Time Of The Apes" as an example. Here we have something that might have been mildly enjoyable (if cheesy) for its intended audience in its original format - a series of TV episodes aimed at juveniles that ripped off "Planet Of the Apes". There's no way this could be considered 'quality' entertainment, but I can see where a little Japanese kid would have gotten a kick out of it. Once Frank got done repackaging it though, the result was an incoherent stink-burger that made no sense at all.
"Time of the Apes" features some of the least nuanced ESL voice dubbing imaginable. Imagine a film full of Gilbert Godfried impersonators doing scenes from "Glen Garry Glen Ross", delivering 85% of the lines at the top of their lungs. Then imagine said Godfried melange being edited with a rotary field mower. Sub plots jump out of nowhere and then are more or less forgotten. Plot devices are introduced, set aside, brought up again, then ignored again. Lines are delivered in with such force and pitch that Jerry Bruckheimer on his most manic day would ask the actors to throttle back "just a little bit".
Let's see if I can give the reader a bit more of the flavor of "TOTA"...the ape captors wait until the three humans revive from their cold sleep, capture them after they run around loose for a bit, tie them to a tree, cut them loose, take them to a field, stand them up for an apparent firing squad, and then are surprised when the trio run away. The three humans stumble into a series of booby traps that aren't even up to the task of killing an obnoxious little boy in upsetting shorts, but are enough to keep a platoon of heavily armed apes at bay for years. The apes' military commander blames Godo (apparently the only surviving native human of that era) for his wife and family's death, but Godo was really trying to save them, only apparently these apes weren't able to hang onto a rope. There's a UFO flying around taking pictures and revealing key plot points, and a computer called UCOM that is brought up twice as the motivating force behind the saucer and...something?...but never actually discussed or explained....it just goes on and on like that. The apes have force fields and assault rifles but drive beat up station wagons. The camera man zooms in so often (and so close) for closeups that I expected the actors to sporting bruises on their foreheads from getting the Steadicam slammed against their heads. The soundtrack is filled to bursting with trumpets on Methadrine that try to pump the grandeur, and it's a ridiculous contrast to the cheap-o costumes, rubber masks and shabby props being used on the sets.
And then, just when the actual plot seems to have ended, the movie violently assaults the viewer with an indigestible wad of voice-over exposition that was apparently intended to tie everything together(something about the extreme cold of the cold sleep units doing something weird to the space-time continuum) but it just sounds like something a couple of hyperactive 7th graders made up for their GI Joe action figure play to explain how Cobra Commander came back from the dead. Rod Serling on his worst day would have rabbit punched any screenwriter who tried this kind of tripe as a way to end an episode.
I am willing to bet that the movie made more sense and was much more watchable before Frank got his hands on it, and I am also willing to bet that MST might have chopped a few more minutes out if it to fit into their format. But I have to comment on what I saw, not what might have been...but this falls into the category of "watch only while hammered out of your skull." The original seems to be utterly lost in obscurity, so only the MST version of it is available to the average viewer. But it is perfect MST fodder, and one of their very best episodes.
Bite me, Sandy Frank. If you meant this stuff to be taken seriously, you are an idiot. Your stuff SUCKS, and is suitable ONLY for parody and lampoon.
Review by lemon_magic from the Internet Movie Database.
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