If you're going to try and re-energize a franchise though, this summer's surprise hit, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is a cookie cutter example of how to pull it off successfully. For fans of the original movies, this newest venture is a mix between Escape, Conquest and Battle with some tweaks here and there to keep us interested. Thankfully director Rupert Wyatt doesn't go for the status quo. It is new. It is interesting from the get-go, and he makes a wise choice. Midway through the movie, the attention is turned from the man and chimp relationship to almost exclusively a story that focuses on the apes. What was surprising is how well the technique works in a movie that genuinely caught me off guard in terms of quality and entertainment value.
Working for a pharmaceutical company in San Francisco, doctor Will Rodman (James Franco) has worked for years on a cure for alzheimer's disease through case studies on chimps. Over five years he has little luck until he starts to work with Caesar, the orphaned infant baby of the one chimp who showed signs of progress. Will is amazed at what he sees over the coming months and years, Caesar growing physically obviously but also taking leaps and bounds forward in terms of intelligence, comprehension and understanding. No matter what happens though or how much he grows and learns though, Caesar is still a monkey and no one quite knows what to do with him. One day, the ever-intelligent chimp defends Will's father (John Lithgow) from a berating neighbor, sending both him and Will down a path where nothing good can come from it.
I watched the movie, and a lot of things rolled around in my head. First, I came away very impressed. It is an impressive, well-told story in terms of scale, but there is a genuine emotion in the proceedings, Will and Caesar and their father/son or brotherly relationship developing. That's probably the best place to start, British actor Andy Serkis who stands in via computer-generated images as Caesar, bringing this highly intelligent chimpanzee to life, making him a full-fledged, red-blooded, 3-D character that you end up rooting for. The serum he takes boosts him to almost a man-like state. Serkis has done work like this before, like Peter Jackson's King Kong and Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but this movie sinks or swims on his performance. All the chimps, apes, and gorillas we meet are CGI so either you buy it or you don't.
The original Apes movies had a certain cheese-ball charm because it was humans dressed as apes. Not the case here. Credit to Serkis and all the techs and engineers for making us believe in and root for these mistreated animals pushed far beyond any normal limits. The Caesar character -- and his relationship with Franco's Will -- is the heart of the movie, especially as we see the chimp develop, taking a power position among the other imprisoned apes at a "sanctuary" run by Brian Cox and Tom Felton. There's the potential for this to go badly and to go badly quickly, but Serkis and Co. commit to the material. I believed what I was watching and was rooting for them. The Caesar character is a perfect lead, better than I could have ever hoped.
That is important when you consider most of the human roles go one of two ways. There are the good humans -- Franco, girlfriend and veterinarian in a pointless role Freida Pinto, scene-stealing Lithgow, monkey handler Tyler Labine -- and the epically bad, like Cox, Felton (Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter movies), David Oyelowo's evil pharmaceutical CEO interested in the $, and berating neighbor David Hewlett. Franco is good in a thankless role that has him overshadowed by his CGI-monkey counterpart, and it's always good to see John Lithgow, even in a supporting role. The bad guys? Well, they're the type of bad guys you just know are going to die horrifically basically from the minute they're introduced. The parts for the human roles are necessary but not essential to the story. They're there to help move things along, and that's all. Don't be bad is all the script requires of them.
So this is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, right? At some point the apes have to take over, right? You won't be disappointed. Caesar develops in front of our eyes from a intelligent, thoughtful young chimp into an ultra-intelligent, clear-thinking grown chimp able to plan and think ahead. Beaten and abused at the sanctuary, he leads an escape as a small herd (right word? Eh, beyond the point) of monkeys, also given the serum that makes them smarter. They go on a rampage through San Francisco, trying to get across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Redwood Forest outside the city. The escape and rampage sequence is like a release for the audience. For one, it's an adrenaline-pumping action scene, highly intelligent apes on the attack, especially the showdown at the Golden Gate. This all sounds ridiculous as I re-read this, but somehow and some way it works. It just does in a way I never thought it would.
Who thought that would happen? I really liked this movie. Did my skepticism and lowered expectations have something to do with it? I honestly don't think so. The story is engaging, the characters -- especially Caesar -- are very interesting, and it's even cool to see the interactions among the chimps, apes and gorillas as they organize. San Francisco is an ideal setting, and composer Patrick Doyle has a score that is solid without being overpowering, working with what's happening on the screen as opposed to against it. There was the potential with a movie about smart apes for an over the top, cartoonish story that could have been truly awful, just a bad movie. 'Rise' avoids all those pitfalls. I hopefully look forward to any sequels coming down the road in the future because this was a great reboot of a franchise.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes <---trailer (2011): *** 1/2 /****
No comments:
Post a Comment