Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011


Director Rupert Wyatt

 Let’s be honest, The Simpsons ruined this. The magnificent episode entitled A Fish Called Selma has made it physically impossible to watch any film from the simian series without expecting the characters to burst into a rendition of “Dr. Zaius” at any moment. So Rupert Wyatt and company really faced an uphill struggle from the beginning to bring some semblance of seriousness to this tale of death, destruction and tree-swingin’ revolution. And you know what? Well done, chaps. Well done indeed.

The plot of the awkwardly titled Rise of the Planet of the Apes (now that is a banana-sized mouthful) revolves around James Franco’s earnest scientist Will in his desperate search for a cure to his father’s ravishing Alzheimer’s. His quest leads him to Caesar, the offspring of a recently deceased chimpanzee who had been given a trial product of Will’s serum. Caesar displays intelligence and abilities far beyond his species, and when he is torn away from Will and subjected to the darker side of humanity, Caesar’s skills take a more sinister turn.

The aspect of the Apes saga that has always produced the most scepticism has been, to put it bluntly, the talking monkeys. It’s not hard to buy that drugs could make apes smarter, and we know that if they put their minds to it, those cute, loveable chimps could make mincemeat out of us. So director Rupert Wyatt, along with writer’s Rick Jaff and Amanda Silver, deserves a significant amount of credit for eliminating that aspect of absurdity. Thus the powerful moment towards the end when Andy Serkis’ Caesar does utter a few syllables are powerful, rather than amusing.

Because this isn’t a comedy. This is a film about human illness, animal experimentation, death, torture, and other sweet, merry delights. We shouldn’t be laughing; even when a gorilla is flying off the Golden Gate Bridge towards a helicopter. Okay, maybe then. Franco and especially the unsung hero of Hollywood Andy Serkis deserve a large amount of credit for maintaining this respectability. Oscar nominee Franco may be playing a fairly atypical, well-natured, ultimately tragic good guy, who is essentially responsible for our doom, but he doesn’t look embarrassed or as though this kind of film is beneath him, which is why casting someone who made his name in the Spiderman series was such a wise move.

Serkis is tremendous. He obviously has plenty of experience monkeying around thanks to his portrayal of King Kong, and it’s evident, with Caesar a charming, warm and delightful character one minute, and a violent, intimidating ape the next. We know the end result will ultimately be the downfall of mankind, but you just can’t help but cheer Caesar and his cohorts on as the get revenge on Tom Felton’s thuggish animal sanctuary guard or David Oyelowo’s slimy suit. It might be a personal thing, but whenever a human was killed or in danger, it was nothing, and yet, whenever a rampaging ape was in trouble or came to a grisly end, it was a Pixar movie all over again.

Weta Digital’s effects for the apes are tremendous, obliterating the rather comical costumes made infamous by the original franchise, whilst the climactic set-piece upon Golden Gate Bridge is a superb piece of action cinema that doesn’t overdo the Green Screen.

Yes, there are things in it that are unnecessary or lazy; Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto’s casting as Will’s glamorous vet girlfriend is blatantly only to provide a bit of eye skirt for us cock-shaking homosapiens, whilst Tom Felton’s Draco Malfoy-turned-zookeeper is about as clichéd as they come. But this is Serkis’ film. Any time Caesar is on screen, things improve vastly, transforming Rise of the Planet of the Apes into a worthy reboot, and making not only Tim Burton’s abomination of a remake from 2001, but also the sound of Troy McClure voice bellowing out "From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z", nothing but a hilarious (for very different reasons) and distant memory.

*** ½ / *****

BLOODY TRAFFIC!