Sometimes, They’re Best Left in the Memory

When “Planet of the Apes” opened--and I’m talking about the 1968 original, not Tim Burton’s ham-fisted, self-absorbed remake--I remember dashing to the theater, so anxious was I to see this movie that promised a whole planet full of non-human talking primates.

And when the movie was over, I remember thinking it was about the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

Three decades later, I decided the time was right to reacquaint myself with that sci-fi classic. And what I learned this time is a lesson the favored movies of my youth have taught me time and time again: Some memories are best left alone.

Of course, I was only 9 when the original movie came out, so “ever” didn’t exactly span a lot of time. Still, listening to a chimpanzee who sounded just like Roddy McDowall (who played the Bookworm on TV’s “Batman”), marveling as a bunch of gorillas roughed up Charlton Heston pretty good (a pretty shabby way to treat Moses, I thought), watching as a bunch of loincloth-clad humans (including Linda Harrison, who filled out her loincloth quite nicely) struggled to outwit their ape captors--boy, that was entertainment.

Before the new film version of Pierre Boulle’s novel opened, I dug out the used cassette I’d bought a few years back, popped it into the VCR, sat back and prepared to be thrilled all over again.

Didn’t happen. Not that the movie’s bad: Boulle’s evolutionary two-step is still a marvelous conceit, and the O. Henry-style ending remains a classic shocker.

And it’s miles better than anything you’ll see in cineplexes this week.

But this was the movie that so wowed me just 33 brief years ago? As a future movie critic, hadn’t I noticed Heston’s chronic overacting, Rod Serling’s preachy dialogue or the cheesy sets? How could I help but chuckle when Cornelius and Zira, the chimps played by McDowall and Kim Hunter, kissed--especially since the makeup made them look like nothing so much as bumping coconuts?

Yep, same film. But different me.

You’d think I’d have picked up on that unassailable fact by now, for this isn’t the first movie subjected to my version of revisionist history.

Although my daughters love it, I can’t watch more than 10 minutes of “Mary Poppins” without my blood sugar climbing dangerously high--even though I remember being outraged that it didn’t sweep the 1965 Oscars. “Doctor Dolittle” once seemed the height of cinematic accomplishment; now it seems long, boring and pretty much half-witted.

Of course, our tastes change over time; if they didn’t, my generation would still regard the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” as the apotheosis of rock ‘n’ roll. And maybe the truth is, so embellished are our childhood memories, so wrapped-up in recollections of uncomplicated good times, that no mere movie could live up to them.

But that explanation’s too simple, too pat. Besides, not all the movies we once loved are destined to become embarrassments to us in our middle age.

In my mind, for instance, “King Kong” will always be the greatest movie ever made (and don’t insult me by thinking I’m referring to the 1976 remake). The luster of “The Wizard of Oz” will never dim. The decadence of “Cabaret” was chilling in 1972, and still is. Cary Grant and Leslie Caron in “Father Goose” still make me laugh, and John Frankenheimer’s “The Train” remains as thrilling as any film has a right to be.

What it all boils down to, I suspect, is the difference between objects and art. Objects are fleeting, designed to meet the needs of the moment; art is forever. Objects are the product of skill, art the product of genius. Objects make an impression; art leaves an impression.

That’s a lesson my late father once taught me, although neither he nor I realized it at the time.

Back when videos were first becoming widely available, my father spent hours searching for a copy of “Parlor, Bedroom and Bath,” a Buster Keaton comedy he remembered as making him laugh nearly to the point of exhaustion. He was always asking me to keep my eyes open for it, on the off-chance it would turn up in some catalog, or on some video store shelf, or maybe on AMC.

But it never turned up, and he died without ever seeing it again.

A few years back, I turned up a copy of “Parlor, Bedroom and Bath” and started watching it. Started, but never finished. My father was undoubtedly a happier man for living with only the memories.

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Chris Kaltenbach is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune company.