Rise of the Planet of the Apes

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is a scary con­cept. I’m not talk­ing about the plot (although I guess the idea of aggres­sive, super-intelligent apes tak­ing over the planet is kind of scary), I’m talk­ing about the idea of the movie itself. Nobody was ask­ing for a pre­quel of the 1968 Charl­ton Hes­ton clas­sic and unnec­es­sary updates are all too com­mon these days. To make mat­ters worse, many view­ers still have a bad taste in their mouth from Tim Burton’s dis­as­trous 2001 remake (with its infa­mous Ape Lin­coln finale). Yet despite the appre­hen­sion of much of its audi­ence, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has turned out to be one of the bet­ter action-adventure films of the summer.

The live-action star of the film is Will Rod­man (James Franco), a sci­en­tist at one of those evil movie drug cor­po­ra­tions where he’s devel­op­ing a risky new drug that makes peo­ple health­ier, stronger and smarter. A dis­as­ter strikes one of his test­ing apes and he feels so guilty that he takes her baby (Andy Serkis, the genius of the motion-capture per­for­mance) home with him. Will is a sci­en­tist with a con­science, show­ing respect for all liv­ing things and look­ing after his sick father (John Lith­gow). Nam­ing the ape Cae­sar, Will quickly notices that he inher­ited some of the drug’s effects from his mother.

Will raises the ape like a son, soon win­ning the heart of an animal-loving vet­eri­nar­ian (Freida Pinto). I kept wait­ing for a scene where Cae­sar got frus­trated shar­ing Will’s affec­tion with his new girl­friend, but the film never cap­i­tal­izes on the opportunity.

Caesar’s life of domes­tic bliss comes to an end when he attacks an angry neigh­bor. Sent to live in a prison-like ani­mal shel­ter, he is too tame to fit in with his fel­low apes. Even worse is the abuse he suf­fers at the hands of the guard (Tom Fel­ton). Using his advanced intel­li­gence, Cae­sar teaches the bully apes a les­son, thus gain­ing the trust and respect of all his ape brethren. He also breaks out, sneaks into Will’s house, and steals more of the drug, which he shares with the other apes.

Now you’ve got an army of apes who are super-smart and super-dangerous. They are des­tined to take over the world, though it turns out their “Rise” is not as force­ful as we’d all assumed. For now, all the apes want to do is be free. But that’s not to say they won’t go through the humans to make it happen.

The human char­ac­ters are about what you’d expect for this kind of story. Where “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” really shines is in the scenes with the apes. At no point does the film come off as humans inter­act­ing with spe­cial effects. These apes are char­ac­ters, Cae­sar being the most relat­able char­ac­ter in the movie. Though they (mostly) don’t talk, their expres­sions and body lan­guage give away their thoughts and emo­tions at all times. And the scene where Cae­sar no longer has to rely on body lan­guage has already right­fully been called one of the most pow­er­ful of the year.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” actu­ally has very lit­tle to do with the rest of the “Planet of the Apes” fran­chise. The iconic line from the orig­i­nal is reused here, but it sounds annoy­ingly forced. The film is merely a very enjoy­able sum­mer block­buster that tells the story of apes who rise above their lim­i­ta­tions. At its best, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is one of the most sur­pris­ing and refresh­ing spe­cial effects extrav­a­gan­zas of the season.

Three Stars out of Five.

”Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is rated PG-13 for intense and fright­en­ing sequences of action and vio­lence. Its run­ning time is 105 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Oct 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.