Grade: C

All that it takes for a slender one-woman stage show to morph into an alternately raucous and sappy ethnic sitcom, it appears, is a little help from the writer-star’s friends. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” began as a loosely autobiographical stand-up routine given by Second City performer Nia Vardalos, and she’s now expanded it into a cinematic vehicle for herself, with no fewer than ten producers of various degrees (including Tom Hanks) listed in the credits. As directed by TV veteran Joel Zwick, the result is a sometimes brash, often saccharine and entirely predictable bit of hokum, but the mixture of slapstick and sentiment will appeal to those who find series like “Everybody Loves Raymond” a laugh riot–though they might regret paying theatre prices for the sort of thing they regularly get for free at home.

Toula (Vardalos) is a young Chicago woman who feels stifled by her big, brawling, impossibly colorful family, headed by cantankerous dad Gus (Michael Constantine) and sympathetic mom Maria (Lainie Kazan). Toula is a plain jane employed at her parents’ restaurant, where she toils in Cinderella-like obscurity until Ian (John Campbell), a handsome customer and prospective Prince Charming, gets her attention. (Her immediate infatuation with the guy, unfortunately, is so overdrawn that it makes her look rather like a sap.) Determined to snag him, she transforms herself in terms of both appearance and personality, and after a clumsily cute meeting they’re soon engaged. The fact that Ian isn’t of Greek heritage, however, upsets the family; and even after they grudgingly accept him, their insistence on throwing a traditional wedding ceremony for the couple leads to all sorts of supposedly hysterical results.

This story will undoubtedly strike a chord with members of many families who have gone through the vicissitudes of courtships and nuptial planning, and that’s a very large audience. Greek-American viewers, in particular, might find it a hoot (though some will probably object to the stereotypes that abound–the aunt played by Andrea Martin is probably the worst offender, though in this company it’s hard to say). What’s clear is that Vardalos and her cohorts will brook no hint of subtlety in telling their tale. Her script leaves nothing to the imagination: every gag is not only spelled out but italicized and underlined to boot, and the obviousness is further accentuated by the director’s heavy-handed approach. From the over-the-top performances he secures (the dyspeptic Constantine comes across like an aged Zorba the Father–his restaurant is even called Zorba’s–and the bulldozing Kazan is like a female force of nature), Zwick seems not to know the meaning of restraint; it’s difficult to believe that he ever advised any of his cast to tone things down even a trifle. Vardalos herself, while not quite so overdrawn as Martin, Constantine or Kazan, plays to the balcony, too; and as a result she’s far less likable than the narrative clearly wants her to be, and hard to take to one’s heart. Corbett, on the other hand, provides a welcome dose of nonchalance to the proceedings; he makes Ian a pleasantly bemused presence among the vociferously gregarious members of the Portakalos clan (even if Ian’s utter willingness to submit to every demand Toula’s relatives make upon him is inexplicable even in a this context). Bruce Gray and Fiona Reid get in a few good moments as the young fellow’s properly bewildered, uptight parents. From a technical point of view the picture is rudimentary as can be, and despite some sloppily inserted footage of elevated trains whizzing around the Loop, the Toronto locations bear very little resemblance to the Windy City, where the action’s supposed to be set. (Couldn’t at least the skyline shots be of Chicago?)

One’s reaction to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” is likely to depend on whether you’re willing to adopt Ian’s extraordinarily tolerant attitude, because this “Wedding” is as hard to endure as most real nuptial ceremonies are (especially when one takes the inevitably noisy, headache-inducing reception into account). If the actual thing is your cup of tea, Vardalos’ movie will probably be so, too. Otherwise, you’d be wise to send your regrets.

Grade: C

Whether they were good (“Ed Wood”), bad (“Mars Attacks”) or indifferent (“Sleepy Hollow”), Tim Burton’s films have always been distinctive–peculiarly wry, cheeky and opulent. So what’s most surprising about his new take on the “Planet of the Apes” franchise is how terribly ordinary and anonymous it is. This revision of the 1968 Franklin Shaffner picture, which itself was a pretty thorough rewriting of the Pierre Boulle novel on which it was based, is a competent, middle-of-the road adventure picture, impressively mounted and tidily directed, and it has a few–though, given its maker, remarkably few–witty moments. But despite its efficiency it never exhibits the whimsical quality that until now has been Burton’s stock-in-trade; it doesn’t carry his characteristic stamp–unlike, say, David Lynch’s “Dune,” which was terrible but still quintessentially Lynchian in its perversity and emphasis on the bizarre. Maybe what the director wanted to prove (as Orson Welles did in 1946 with “The Stranger”) is that he could make a simple genre picture as well as anyone; but while respectable enough on its own fairly low terms, the picture is disappointingly conventional and unimaginative. It also has far less subtext about prejudice and racism than the first film did.

One doesn’t want to give away too much about the plot, since the writers have tried to alter things sufficiently to make the result less a remake than a rethinking. Suffice it to say that the narrative has been updated to the year 2029, when Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg), an astronaut-researcher on a space station, goes off on an unauthorized trip into some sort of electrical storm in an attempt to retrieve the chimp he’s been training, which has been sent into the disturbance to secure readings on the phenomenon but has disappeared. Our hero soon finds himself on the titular planet, where simians rule and humans are a brutalized sub-species. Before long he finds himself the leader of a small rebellion involving a human family, including patriarch Karubi (Kris Kristofferson) and his Ursula Andress-like daughter Daena (Estella Warren); also joining the ragtag group from the opposite side are “human rights” chimp activist Ari (Helena Bonham Carter) and, reluctantly, sneakily entrepreneurial slave-trader Limbo (Paul Giamatti). Their relentless pursuer is the extra-hawkish simian general and, apparently, defense secretary Thade (Tim Roth). Everything winds up at a locale where the past history of the planet is revealed, a hand-to-hand (paw-to-hand?) battle ensues, and a “deus ex machina” arrives in a rather absurd coincidence to resolve matters. As if all this weren’t enough, there’s a tacked-on epilogue which, one supposes, is intended to match the once-shocking denouement of the original “Apes” (as well as–from a pragmatic point of view–to set the stage for a sequel), but comes off as silly and pointless as the close of one of Rod Serling’s poorer “Twilight Zone” episodes.

Overall, this scenario–pedestrian, to be sure, but until the dumb final scene at least an acceptable variant on the first picture–is competently transferred to the screen. The production design and art direction are impressive, the makeup (by Rick Baker) is as good as one would expect (though hardly realistic), the music by Danny Elfman is heavy on the jungle-drums percussiveness that seems obligatory but still aids the action, and the editing keeps things moving briskly. The performances are at best workmanlike across the board, with Wahlberg stolid but okay as the spaceman (true to his intention to be taken as a real actor, he eschews the old loincloth and remains fully-dressed throughout–which might disappoint some female viewers). Roth, of course, masticates any scenery within reach of his prominent fake teeth with obvious relish. And Charlton Heston makes a brief appearance as the general’s dying father, who imparts to his son a terrible secret and a directive to wipe out the human rebels. As written, his scene is a kind of jokey cadenza, spoofing both his role in the earlier film and his public persona; it’s amusing enough, but, as cadenzas always are, intrusive and showy. Most of the other humor comes in the form of asides that call to mind modern lines that have become part of our cultural consciousness–one that’s derived from Barry Goldwater, another that sounds vaguely Reaganesque, a third (spoken in italics by Giamatti) that refers to a celebrated racial incident. (One doesn’t want to be overly specific here and spoil the little fun the viewer’s likely to have in catching them.) Generally, however, the dialogue is awfully tame and obvious–domesticated Burton, as it were.

And that’s the basic problem with “Planet of the Apes.” Like “Jurassic Park III,” it’s a fairly efficient but ultimately pallid piece, reasonably easy to endure but, in this case, a serious disappointment considering the source. If, in making it, Burton was allowed to be Burton, it appears he’s forgotten what made his previous pictures special, even when they weren’t first-rate. This time around, he’s gone a standard route, and while the result might satisfy the undemanding looking for an air conditioned spot in the summer heat, it offers little more than that; one can only wonder what magic the fellow who thought up “Beetlejuice,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Edward Scissorhands” might once have worked on this material.