Someone hand me the banana-flavoured popcorn!
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES specialises in super-smart apes, and not one of them is a human. The best actors are all chimpanzees. The script has dialogue so lame it could have been written by a thousand typing monkeys battering away at a keyboard. This is not to say ‘Rise’ is not a fun movie, because it is! It is just not, shall we say, highly evolved.
No, ‘Rise’ is mostly about special effects and action and these are good enough to keep you entertained. James Franco plays a scientist named Will who develops a cure for Alzheimer’s. When tested upon chimpanzees, it makes them highly smart. Franco’s test subject is a chimpanzee named ‘Bright Eyes’ who one day goes berserk and attacks her keepers. The drug is blamed and she is put down, but subsequently Will finds out she was actually protecting her baby. He adopts the chimp, names him Caesar and finds the little guy has inherited his mum’s smarts. In the meantime, Will secretly gives the drug to his dad (a wonderful John Lithgow), who not only recovers from Alzheimer's but actually grows smarter himself.
A misunderstanding with an angry neighbour leads to Caesar being forcibly placed into a zoo, where he is routinely abused by Draco Malfoy of all people (I kid you not). Caesar escapes and returns to Will’s place to steal the drug and begins handing it out like peanuts to his fellow apes. He leads a revolt of super-smart simians against the human overlords resulting in several scenes with the potential to become iconic. The one of leaves falling on a sunny suburban street as the ape army marches through the foliage above is chillingly evocative.
‘Rise’ is one of those movies that seems equally divided by good and bad. Monkeys good. People bad. The finest acting performance is put in by Caesar, who is played by the CGI motion capture specialist Andy Serkis (you know him as Gollum). Franco, in contrast, is used to woodenly explain things that are really obvious. He is lucky compared to Freida Pinto, who is given the thankless task of playing Will’s obligatory cardboard-cut out girlfriend, Caroline. The other notable humans are marked by being unpleasant to an unlikely degree (neighbour, zoo keeper and corporate executive). When threatened by a mutiny of chimps and gorillas, the stupid humans run for their guns, and not for the drug that could make them smarter than super-smart so they could figure a way out of this mess. Frankly, the monkeys give them the whupping they deserve.
The final climatic scene sums up the movie perfectly. It is full of vim, vigour and spectacular CGI-enhanced action. But instead of simultaneously delivering a powerful human message like the Charlton Heston original did, it settles for shamelessly setting up a sequel. This may all seem a little harsh, because you certainly won’t feel like you have wasted the cost of your ticket-price with ‘Rise’, but at the end of the day it doesn’t want to be taken too seriously - it just wants to have fun. And that it does.
Three stars out of five. Rated PG-13 (for violence, terror, some sexuality and brief strong language).