Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011 monkey mayhem

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A scientist experiments with drugs to help Alzheimer's patients and ends up with a monkey who is more intelligent than most Americans. In fact, Caesar probably would have been smart enough to see previews for this movie and decide not to spend the money to see it. After an act of violence forces The Man to separate Caesar from his scientist buddy, he gets angry, gives the same drug to a bunch of damn dirty apes, and breaks out to cause a few explosions.

There's a funny scene in this movie where Franco's character meets his love interest for the first time. Caesar starts making these hand gestures that are very obviously sexual, but Franco's character covers with a "He thinks I should take you to dinner." Other than that lone scene, I can't think of another reason to even watch this movie. It's a big dumb summer blockbuster that's all special effects and no depth. A basic plot outline would sound like something that has a lot of potential, and a prequel to Planet of the Apes to explain how the maniacs blew it all up and why they deserved to have that gun nut damn them all to hell in the first movie isn't a terrible idea. And this is much better than that Tim Burton travesty that resulted in me taking a trip to the zoo just so I could get in a shouting match with an ape. But no, this is just embarrassing. You get a really big start with a buttload of fake-looking monkeys. The CGI monkeys in this look so fake, as a matter of fake, that after watching this, I wasn't even sure if I'd ever seen a real monkey. And there are times when I can see that what the special effects gurus behind this did is really pretty remarkable. The actors' rapport with the fake looking animals, all those monkeys on the screen moving around at the same time, and even Andy Serkis's skills in giving Caesar so much personality all make you think, "Yeah, I'm sure a lot of money went into this and it's really a remarkable achievement." But those monkeys just don't look real at all, and that took me completely out of the movie. And Serkis? I hope he isn't reading this because I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I think what he does is really pretty overrated. Caesar overacts, and it gets worse the older he gets. And the more scenes we get of Caesar (or any of the monkeys for that matter) moving around, the more ridiculously cartoonish they look. The only thing even coming close to that level of ridiculousness would be John Lithgow's distracting performance as Franco's father. I'm just not sure Alzheimer's is supposed to be this funny, but I laughed at Lithgow's delivery of this "Look at him go!" line and then again at these expressions he was making as he was wrecking his neighbor's car. No, I didn't really want to laugh at a character with Alzheimer's. It just didn't seem right. Draco Malfoy (ok, Tom Felton) didn't seem right either. He almost blasphemy screams "It's a madhouse! It's a madhouse!" at one point and then, even tackier, gets a "damn dirty ape" line. Felton better be careful or he's going to be typecast as "young punk bully guy" and miss out on his chance to eventually be a James Bond. All this builds to a silly looking action scene on a bridge that is about as thrilling and realistic as the scenes in that last big action movie you saw. It's violence that takes no chances, likely to avoid an R rating, I imagine. And there's just no real tension or any reason to care about what's going on with either the underdeveloped monkey characters except for maybe Caesar or the human characters who don't even have names. But you'll dig it if you like fake-looking monkeys jumping around and destroying helicopters. I had hope going into this movie, but this was nothing but disappointment. And now I have to make another trip to the zoo to take it out on some animals who had nothing to do with the production of this.