I've never seen the 1968 film version of Planet of the Apes, though, it's hard to not have any influence from the film, considering how often it's referenced. Still, I went into this book with as little outside influence as I think is possible for someone my age, living in the US. I wasn't sure what to expect, and honestly thought it was going to be some "action-packed sci-fi thriller." There's little to no action, and it's actually more akin to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels than any science fiction novel I've read. (Granted, that's not a whole lot, and most of the ones I have read are by Wells.) Throughout the whole novel, I kept thinking of Gulliver's time among the horses. Anyone who tells you there's not a direct influence from that is a boldfaced liar, and you should kick that man in the shin bone. 
 The narrator, Ulysse Morou, also brought to mind Lemuel Gulliver in their somewhat shared persona. I forget where I read it, but I once I've read that for fantastical travelogues such as this, we need a rather prosaic narrator, which is exactly what we have. Just like Gulliver, the only truly interesting things about him are the wonders he has to relate. Of course, odd things can't happen to an odd person. That's one odd too many. (I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that.) This puts a lot of pressure on those wonders, but Boulle handles them in a fine fashion. 
 The story, like Gulliver's, is somewhat hard to believe, but like any good fantastic story, the incredulousness of it gives way to the entertainment it brings. There were very few moments when I really had to suspended my disbelieve, which is one of the benefits of the prosaic narrator--he's too dull to be lying. 
 More than just entertaining, though, the novel succeeds in being thought-provoking, and, in certain aspects, haunting. These moments were mostly within the last hundred pages. It's not until Morou is released that the story ceases to be simply a good yarn and becomes something more. The eschatological aspects were, in my opinion, the most moving. The china doll being found did not strike a deep impression upon me, despite the momentousness of it in the plot, but the city, aged over 10,000 years and buried in the sand, struck me forcibly. I found his explanation of how apes overtook and surpassed humans to be somewhat spurious, to say the least, but his retelling of the events was chilling. I was especially moved by the last line of that retelling: 'Their army is upon us and all they are carrying are whips!' 
 The idea of man being too lazy to even stop his own destruction is not one to be scoffed at. Our own destruction could easily come upon us, not with guns or weapons of war, forcing itself upon us; but rather, by our own lack of will to stop it.