Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I’m a huge fan of 1968’s original Planet of the Apes and I watched all the sequels and the 2001 remake by Tim Burton, so I wasn’t going to miss the latest entry in the canon.

The reviews for Rise of the Planet of the Apes were quite good going in, and I too really enjoyed the movie.

Synopsis: James Franco is a scientist working on a cure for Alzheimer, which affects his father’s brain.  He’s developing a virus that should spur the brain to rebuild itself and testing it on apes, where it causes genetic mutations.  Because of a violent accident, the program is shut down and he ends up with a baby ape (Caesar) whose mother was a subject of Franco’s experiments and passed the mutations on to him.  Caesar’s intellectual capabilities keep growing, allowing him to rise above all other apes, until one day being considered an animal isn’t good enough anymore.

Franco does a good job in a role that is neither substantial nor central, and Freida Pinto and John Lithgow are good supporting players.  However, the one who shines even from behind a computer generated layer is once again Andy Serkis, the man who brought to life The Lord of the Rings’s Gollum.

While some of the apes’ effects look too manufactured, especially the baby ape, Serkis’ Caesar looks totally real.  That guy deserves an Oscar for his talent, but they’d never consider him because you can’t see his actual face, even though every movement on Caesar’s face corresponds exactly to a movement of Serkis’ muscles.

The Bottom Line: Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a great addition to the “Apes” series and will not disappoint thanks to both character development (the first half of the movie relies heavily on that) and action sequences (more prevalent in the second half, after the rising, and culminating in an adrenaline drenched sequence on the Golden Gate bridge).  It’s also nice to see how the whole thing started, so if you are a fan, don’t miss it.

Grade: 8