I grew up watching 1968’s and 1970’s Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (RIP, Charlton Heston). Which means I’ve been wondering ever since childhood what happened? How’d the apes started talking, how’d humans become second-class citizens … I mean … just what the heck happened???? And now, roughly twenty years after I first pondered these questions, here finally is the answer. Thank you, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (RPA).
Credit where credit is due: RPA borrows a bit — ok, a lot — of science from 1999’s Deep Blue Sea. (Starring Thomas Jane, LL Cool J, Saffron Burrows, and Samuel Jackson. Don’t you dare judge me for loving this movie!) In Deep Blue Sea, scientists are trying to cure Alzheimer’s by injecting sharks with a serum that causes dead brain cells to reanimate. As a side effect, the sharks get smarter, and as a result, things become FUBAR. In RPA, scientists are trying to cure Alzheimer’s by injecting apes with a serum that enables the body to fight the disease. As a side effect, the apes get smarter, and as a result, things become FUBAR.
The film’s star, hands down, is Caesar. I know he’s completely CG (Shout out to the special effects peeps and to Andy Serkis. Another fine job, dude! Can’t wait to see you reprise your role as Gollum!), but still. This chimp is bad ass. He MAKES the movie. His facial expressions, the way he smiles or glares or just, like, observes: totally effective. James Franco plays the scientist who developed the serum and who raised Caesar. He’s a man driven, we discover, by the need to save his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, played by John Lithgow. (After watching Lithgow play a serial killer on Dexter, I found this complete turn-around to be very effective. Nice casting.) And David Oyelowo is very convincing as the heartless, profits-driven head of the corporation. Hell, I even like the guy who plays the asshole next-door neighbor.
Any low points? Yup. I wish they’d given Frieda Pinto more to do than just be the really pretty love interest, there were two scenes that would have been more powerful had James Franco actually cried instead of just stared, and I’m mad that Tom Felton, who plays classmate-bullying lout Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, plays an ape-bullying lout in RPA. Beware typecasting, kid. Also, if I were put in charge of supersmart animals, be they sharks, apes, or a herd of tapirs, I would be super duper nice to them to try to avoid a revolt. Why does that never occur to anyone in movies like this?
But overall, RPA very much does not disappoint. And now, I eagerly look forward to the sequel to the prequel. Which better not take ANOTHER twenty years.
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