Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011)

WARNING

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS THEN DON'T READ THE BITS WRITTEN IN RED.

OTHER THAN THIS BIT, OBVIOUSLY.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

And so it has come to this. Forty three years since the arrival of Planet Of The Apes, after numerous terrible sequels and a totally pointless remake, we have all arrived at the only logical final step for this franchise, a reboot. This isn't your average reboot though, not only does it succeed in rebooting a long dead franchise, but it also works as a prequel to the original 1968 film and as a loose remake to the series fourth installment COTPOTA.

For the few of you with a high enough IQ to be able to cast your minds back to four days ago, you'll remember that I quite enjoyed COTPOTA. My favourite aspects of that film being the lead characters dark evolution throughout the flick and the slightly unsettling 'we're all fucked' ending.

The story this time revolves around James Franco raising an ape by himself after his Animal testing lab has been shut down. The baby ape (named Caesar) has a much higher than expected IQ on account of him being born of a mother who had been used to test a drug that had the potential to cure Alzheimer's by regenerating dead brain cells, thusly making a healthy brain more intelligent. Caeser soon grows up to become as smart if not smarter than many of his human cohorts which eventually lands him into some trouble, getting him locked up in some kind of ape prison. I'll allow you work out the rest of the plot based on either the title or the films over revealing trailer.

The aforementioned trailer for Rise really does do a good job of giving away much of the films third act. It also misleads the audience into expecting a big, hollywood blockbuster action film when in actual fact the film is a deliberately paced drama, something which makes Rise a much better film than the trailer advertises.

As any regular movie goer will know, two major keys to a successful drama is good acting and good direction. The acting side of this film relying almost entirely on the shoulders of Andy Serkis's mo'cap performance as the films leading ape. Serkis, now becoming a veteran of motion capture acting, delivers a performance here that is emotionally engaging, tense, enjoyable, fun and menacing all at the same time. The performance, unlike Serkis's live action attempts, is remarkably subtle, relying entirely on facial expression rather than vocal work. At the time being, it's hands down my favourite performance of this year. Sadly the same can't really be said for the human actors.

The downside to the film being told from an apes perspective is that we don't get to spend much time with the human beings in the film, leading to many of them coming across as one dimensional plot requirements rather than fully fledged characters. Playing Will Rodman is James Franco who does his usual decent job, making the somewhat ridiculous story believable while supporting the performace of Serkis's Caesar. The trouble is though that by the films end we still don't know very much about Will. Same can be said about John Lithgow who does a great job of portraying Will's dementia suffering father, only to drop out of the story during the films second act. Freida Pinto, a great actress in other movies, also suffers by playing a one dimensional, typical girlfriend role who, as far as I'm aware, only exists in order to prevent the film from becoming a proverbial sausage fest'. It is worth noting however that the human characters aren't very important to Rise's story and had they been featured more heavily then, no doubt, the film would have suffered in terms of pacing, something which Rise gets spot on.

There is very little writing going on in Rise, not that this is a bad thing. What dialogue there is, doesn't come across too badly with the exception of that inevitable moment when they quote Heston in very much the same way the writers did in Tim Burtons film. As I have already said, Rise follows the story from Caesars point of view which ensures very little talking seeing as the ape doesn't possess the power of speech. What this means is that the film rely's more heavily on its actors and director rather than the power of the written work, but for what its worth, the writing is on the whole solid and serves the film well, albeit in more of a supporting role.    

At the head of the Rise project is relatively unknown director Rupert Wyatt, a man who's previous credits include a small budget brit' flick called The Escapist and a few episodes of Hollyoaks. After reading that kind of resumé you'd be forgiven for expecting the direction of Rise to be akin to that of the Titanic's maiden voyage when in fact the end result is much closer to the experience of watching a toddler fellate a horse, namely captivating and oddly pleasing in a non sexual way. The films tone, pacing, atmosphere and dramatic weight are all top notch. Rupert Wyatt's work levelling that of many other, more experienced directors. His control over the films dramatic first two acts is wonderful, as is his visual flair during the all action closing moments. His work in Rise as a whole comes across as fresh and original, something which I feel should make him a dead cert' when it comes to hiring for Rise's inevitable and in my opinion much needed sequel.

I think its pretty obvious by now that I'm going to award Rise fairly well. I enjoyed pretty much every aspect of the film, only being drawn back when it came to the handling of the human characters. I can only hope that the writers have something more in store for Franco and company in When The Apes Have Just Taken Over And Plan To Lead The World Down The Wrong Path, Turning Humans Into Lesser Beings And Loosing Their Way On An Emotional Level While Trying To Live Happily On The Planet Of The Apes, or whatever they plan to call it.  

It will probably be this years best big budget Hollywood blockbuster. It also supplies 1968's Planet Of The Apes with its 'prime' mate. (Thats the last one, I promise. I just couldn't resist one last chance to monkey around!)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes gets...

                              

4 out of 5