5.0
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes Review
Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The title alone suggests the exact thing that sci-fi fans have been waiting to see since witnessing the finale of the original film in 1968. I went into this movie expecting the Apes to get their smarts and overthrow the Human race, and we do get some of that, but this film is really just the set up for a potential sequel. That’s right, the title of this film is not only unnecessarily lengthy but it’s also false. The Apes become smart and they do fight back against their supreme overlords, but this all happens right at the end of the movie and apart from just being really angry, there’s no hint that the Apes intend on becoming the dominant form of life on the Planet. So what’s the point?
Humans are assholes. That’s what we can take away from this latest reboot of the Apes saga.
ROTPOTA (You’d have to be crazy to think I’m going to bother typing the entire title more than once in this review) follows the Ape ‘Caesar’ – played to digital perfection by Andy Serkis, using Weta’s motion capture tech – from his birth in captivity to his eventual leading of the Ape resistance. Caesar is super smart, thanks to a virus created by Will (James Franco), a scientist who intended for the virus to be used as a cure for Alzheimer’s. Will keeps Caesar at his house and teaches him to use sign language for communication, but Caesar ends up doing something bad and finds himself put into captivity with a large group of stupid Apes. Then the Apes gets angry and they break out and they beat up some people and the movie ends.
This film goes for just under 2 hours and 1 and a half hours of that is just setup. The movie has a strong message that it wants to convey and that message is “Hey, animal cruelty is wrong.” It’s a nice message, to be sure, but the film continues to beat the audience over the head with it by using close-ups of Caesar’s sad face for most of the run time. The effects are amazing, these are Weta’s best looking creatures to date, but I reached a point after the first hour where I just couldn’t bare the constant depression. A joke or two wouldn’t be too much to ask, would it? I like a movie with a message, especially when it’s an expensive summer movie, but there comes a point in time where a “message film” starts to talk down to it’s audience rather than speaking on the same level and Apes does that for half an hour.
The people who play people in this movie mean absolutely zero to the plot. James Franco does nothing except invent the smart serum, his relationship to Caesar is completely written off once Caesar starts to rise up and the filmmakers don’t bother giving their relationship a satisfactory conclusion. Frieda Pinto is in the movie too, don’t ask me why, but she’s there… so that’s nice. John Lithgow is probably the best non-CG actor in the movie, playing Franco’s Father. He brings a sincerity to his character that no one else seems to bother about, he’s a little too good to be honest, he should have played an Ape.
Why would I suggest that John Lithgow play an Ape? Because that’s where all the good acting is in this movie, as well as the best writing. The entirely CG creations are just another notch in Weta’s very large headboard. Caesar is the star of this movie and I’m sure Andy Serkis had a lot to do with that. We all know how much he bought to Gollum in The Lords of the Rings trilogy, and I don’t doubt that he’s put just as much effort into bringing Caesar to life. Caesar is the most believable CG character to appear on film in quite a while and thanks to that fact I couldn’t help looking forward to his eventual rise to power. Not once did I care about any of the humans in this film as much as I cared about Caesar, and most of his scenes are full of speechless mime.
ROTPOTA is an above average blockbuster. The middle of the film is a bore, the ending leaves something to be desired and most of the human characters are less believable than the digital creatures, but the good points do outweigh the bad. The effects are brilliant and Caesar is an amazing character to watch. The film has a message that, while over staying its welcome, is still meaningful and the filmmakers should be commended for not shying away from incorporating it into a movie that could have just been a stupid popcorn flick. If the movie was a half hour shorter or if the “rise” took up a bigger portion of the movie I would have loved it, but as it stands, it’s just ok.
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