Monkey See, Monkey Do - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

4 our of 5 Popcorn Kernels

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is a very difficult movie to review. This is a movie where the human actors act more like the apes than the apes do. 

Rise has some very good special effects; they wont stand the test of time, because you can tell the real from the CGI, but 20 minutes into the movie, when the lead ape Ceasar begins to gain personality, it is quite appealing and fascinating to watch...everyone else is (excuse the pun)...second banana.

There is action a-plenty in Rise, and it moves very quickly while still giving us a plot that makes sense. And of all the Planet of the Apes movies (Tim Burton's version still being my favorite), this one manages to create a world where  animals are animals, and not an allegory for gender/class separation as the X-Men series has become; but then again, this story feels unfinished, with an ending that teases us with what is yet to come. Will there be a sequel - I'm sure that will depends on the box-office receipts.


The movie stars Will Rodman (James Franco), as a neuroscientist who is trying to develop a cure for Alzheimer's, which his father Charles (Jon Lithgow) is afflicted. He has good results on one chimpanzee, who has developed a very high intelligence along with some very brigh, very human eyes - but that chimp goes...well...apesh*t, and is killed but is also found to have just given birth. This baby is ordered to be destroyed by Will's boss, Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo - good performance), but Will's coworker Robert (Tyler Labine), and he, cannot do it, and Will takes the baby chimp along with him to raise.


This is where CGI takes over, and as any New Yorker will tell you, keeping wild animals in your home is only cute as long as they stay babies - but all children will grow up, and to imagine that this chimp can stay at this home is unreasonable. And in the movie, as the chimp gets smarter, and Will's funding gets cut, he decides to try the cure on his Father. It works, and this small family grows into an interesting one, but through some happenstances, the chimp, named Ceasar (Andy Serkis - more on him later) adult tendicies come to surface, and Will has to have him sent to a primate facility, where he confronts chimps, apes, and the like - that aren't as domesticated as he...but he plans to change that...


And so Rise begins to take off in the direction that it is suppose to, and Ceasar begins to Rise against the tyranny of the facility, and the reality of who (or what) he really is. The diversity of the animals, and the range of their personalities is really well thought out, and once Ceasar escapes and finds the cure (which we soon find out is not all that it promises), and brings it back to his hairy brother and sisters, the personalities really become 3-dimentional, and we want the chimps to conquer their freedom.

Work Can Be A Zoo

But all this plotting feels disjointed. There is really no reason for their freedom being gained, and it makes no sense that Ceasar, having being brought up inside a home all his life, would have the smarts to know how the outside world really works, and to develop a realistic plan for survival. Unless the cure was airdropped around the world, and the chimps had advanced smart phones to communicate with each other, their plan to just run into the wild, seems foolish. I expect that if there are sequals, maybe this will be developed more carefully.


Besides the pace of the action, the actors are a bit bland, given the roster of talent on board. James Franco is subdued, which is surprising from the performance (and Oscar Nod) in 127 Hours. John Lithgow, whom I love, seems satisfied to just play the father, brush his wild hair back, and go collect his check. David, as Will's boss, is a Black British actor - and an very talented thespian, who once played the part of a "white king" in a Shakespear production that had audiences gasping at such a thing (you can also see a glimpse of him in The Help, as the preacher), has volume but is too busy playing "mean" to really be a good protagonist. Look also for a few Slumdog Millionaires, and former Wizards here too...As for Ceasur, who is played by Andy Serkis (who also played Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Kong, and soon to play Capt. Haddock in the new Tin Tin movie, and Gollum again in The Hobbit), who is also British, has some very good depth in conveying emotion in body language. He must be a ninja when it comes to playing charades.


And it is this emotion, this feel for the character, that Ceasar accomplishes, which has not been given to the other actors. When the chimps, apes, orangatangs get together it is a treat, and it didn't need a lot of special powers, or explosives to pull this off. This is really a movie that can stand along your collection of other Planet of the Ape movies, and is better than it should be...it wont have you climbing the trees with excitement, but at least it wont have you scratching your head either.