Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) Review

In 1968 damned dirty apes didn't take their filthy paws off Charlton Heston and a cultural phenomenon was born. It was an immediate success and spawned four sequels, two television series, a remake and a plethora of merchandise. I'm not going to bring about the differences between remakes and reboots because, let's face it, that's boring and arbitrary. Rise of the Planet of the Apes bears very little resemblance to the original Apes films and still manages to function on its own in a way that is surprisingly fresh and interesting so I decided to treat it as such.

Scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) lives and works in San Francisco. He's working on a chemical compound that is being tested on chimpanzees. This formula not only is increasing brain functionality, but Will thinks it will help his father's Alzheimer's (John Lithgow). When one chimp goes on a rampage during a share holders' meeting the project is forced to stop, Will and his co-worker Robert (Tyler Labine) must put down the test chimps. They soon realize the one chimp didn't have a bad reaction to the drug, but that she had a baby and was protecting her offspring. Will names the young chimp Caesar and takes him home and raises him. Caesar the chimp is showing signs of increased intelligence like his mother had shown. Caesar grows and grows and gets even smarter with Will at home. He's learned sign language and is much more intelligent than any other animal Will has worked with. Will decides to test his formula on his father and his father starts showing positive signs. He tells his boss what he did and the boss wants full research and experimenting done. When an incident takes Caesar away from Will, he must give up his beloved chimp and put him in an animal control center for monkey, chimps and apes. As Caesar finds difficulty to his new environment, he meets an orangutan who also knows sign language and they communicate on how to control things. Caesar soon finds himself the leader of the animals and decides he's had enough of the bad treatment by his human handlers (including Harry Potter's Tom Felton). Caesar is smart enough to come and go as he pleases and is able to get Will's latest chemical compound to increase the other animals' intelligence. Now that the primates are running the asylum, Caesar leads a rebellion. He gathers every ape and chimp there and then breaks into Will's work to free the other captives. As his rebellion grows and he gains more backers from the local zoo, Caesar leads his animal army to San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge where it is animal vs. man for control of the future.

The technical wizards at Weta (would you trust anyone else to create motion capture?) have once again been able to create something rather extraordinary in the CGI. They have managed to mix said CGI and live-action seamlessly. One easily wonders where the human begins and the special effect ends. The apes have weight and happen to move much like they really would. One of the best performances in the film is that of a character that isn't really there. Andy Serkis plays Caesar with such a mesmerizing brilliance that we have to believe in Caesar and, surprisingly root for him to get what he wants by the end of the film even though what he wants is to kinda, sort of take over the world. Sure Caesar is a computer generated character but Serkis still created the basis for him and performed all his movements and were it not for the strict rules excluding computer-created characters from consideration I would expect Serkis to score a Best Supporting Actor Nomination.

The great effects and Serkis' performance don't help any of the human roles from being moderately boring and majorly underwritten, just as an example James Franco is just sort of there to show that not all humans are evil.

Even though some of the things that happen in the film are rather unrealistic (Chimpanzees are not 5'11" when standing upright) I was not bothered by them enough to be turned off the film.

★★★1/2