Twentieth Century Fox Review in a Hurry: After all of the feel-good, comic-book heroics of summer, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a surprisingly nasty (in a good way) franchise reboot that comes closer than any prior POTA film to being a full-on horror movie. Unlike Tim Burton's "re-imagining," this hews closer to its immediate inspiration, 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the one in which oppressed chimps rise up to attack mankind and we humans in the audience cheer our own obsolescence every step of the way.
Oh, and this time it's all James Franco's fault.
GALLERY: Comic-Con Star Sightings
The Bigger Picture: Franco and precocious primates are a volatile combination. In 2005's The Ape, he inherited one as a roommate, and the resultant film was a cinematic disaster. In this movie, playing a scientist named Will Rodman, he secretly adopts a genetically altered chimp named Caesar (Andy Serkis), and a pretty fine piece of disaster cinema ensues.
Rodman's seeking an Alzheimer's cure so that he can save his father (John Lithgow), a once-brilliant musician. So he tests his vaccine on chimps, apparently making them smarter, until things go badly wrong and everything is shut down. But nobody knows about new ape-infant Caesar, so Rodman, unwilling to put him down, takes the sleeping simian home.
At first, the film is a bit iffy. The C.G.I. ape—as a child—looks unfinished and vaguely cartoonish, and the narrative brushes over several major leaps (Rodman has no idea that the female chimp he's carefully monitoring for medical side-effects is pregnant and about to give birth? Really?). But the more things proceed, the less that stuff matters (though there are a few shots towards the end that really could have used a few extra week's work on the rendering).
By the time an older Caesar makes trouble and gets thrown in a poorly run sanctuary with other apes, the suspension of disbelief is complete, even though (or maybe because) Caesar looks and emotes more like the real-life Andy Serkis than did the actor's previous motion-capture roles of Kong and Gollum.Considering his captors are a sadistic Tom Felton and an apathetic Brian Cox, the deck is stacked in terms of whom to root for.
You may think you know the entire story already, not just because it's a remake but also because the trailers give away some significant moments from the last part of the film. Fortunately, it turns out that 20th Century Fox has been playing some cards close to the vest. You probably don't know as much as you think you do, and it's a pleasure to watch the chaos theory in motion, with relatively minor events that come together in just the right way to create a planetary crisis (be sure to sit through the first part of the end credits for a crucial plot detail).
But be warned, this is no mild escapism. Apes and humans kick, punch, bleed, die and kill, while culture critics will have a field day wondering if the subtext is about slavery like the original, or perhaps the terrorists winning in the new era. Wink-wink in-jokes provide some levity, while fleeting newspaper headlines set up possible sequels. It'll be interesting to see how, and if, those evolve.
The 180—A Second Opinion: If you were hoping the C.G.I. had improved since the trailer...it hasn't. Then again, it's not like the rubber masks in the original were super-believable, and we love them anyway.
PHOTOS: Movies from the Future
photo source: HD Wallpapers
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