Bovie Movie

Two low-level American crooks head to Australia, where they match wits with a kangaroo (who appears to have an intellectual edge on his pursuers) in this broad comedy. Charlie Carbone (Jerry O’Connell) is a hairdresser from Brooklyn whose best friend, Louis Booker (Anthony Anderson), scrapes together a living moving stolen merchandise. Charlie’s stepfather, Sal Maggio (Christopher Walken), is a crime kingpin who has loaned Charlie a lot of money and wants to know when he’ll get it back; Sal’s not especially fond of Louis, especially after he and Charlie accidentally lead the police to a storehouse of burgled goods owned by Sal. Charlie owes Sal a big favor, and Sal wants Charlie and Louis out of his hair for a while, so Sal sends them to Australia, where they’re to deliver a large amount of cash to a mysterious Mr. Smith (Marton Csokas). En route to their meeting in the outback, Charlie and Louis accidentally run over a kangaroo, and the half-bright tourists decide to dress the dead marsupial in sunglasses and Louis’ favorite jacket for snapshots. However, the animal wasn’t as dead as they imagined, and it soon hops away, shortly after Louis realizes the payment to Mr. Smith was in the pocket. Now Louis and Charlie are out to find the fast-moving critter, with the help of Jessie (Estella Warren), a wildlife expert; Mr. Jimmy (David Ngoombujarra), a wilderness guide; and Blue (Bill Hunter), a pilot familiar with the outback.

This big budget “re-imagining” of the 1968 original departs somewhat from both that classic science fiction film and the source novel by author Pierre Boulle. Mark Wahlberg stars as Leo Davidson, an astronaut of the early 21st century whose unauthorized mission to rescue a chimp companion from a mysterious space storm goes awry when he and his ship are lost through a rip in the fabric of time. Leo crash-lands on a planet where intelligent, talking apes are the dominant species and humans a conquered slave class. Befriending both a chimpanzee activist named Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who’s sympathetic to humans, and a beautiful human rebel, Daena (Estella Warren), Leo quickly becomes a prominent figure of resistance to his fellow humans. This makes him an instant source of irritation for the militant and ambitious General Thade (Tim Roth) and his trusted adjutant, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), who intend to hunt Leo down and crush the burgeoning human uprising. War looms between ape and human as Leo and his band head for a sacred site deep in an off-limits desert, where secrets about the planet’s ape and human ancestry wait to be revealed. Planet of the Apes is directed by Tim Burton and features the original film’s star, Charlton Heston, in a cameo role as the dying father of Thade.