Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Bolt your doors and stay indoors, or if you own a rocket, use it to flee the planet. The chimps are revolting again, and this time they're more pissed than ever. While it shamelessly flaunts the moniker of the 1968 film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is only a very distant relative, having, as it does, little to do with the original. And although the dubious prosthetics have been replaced by some remarkable motion-capture technology, here's a summer biggie to avoid like the plague.

The outline in brief (and no points for guessing what happens having already clocked the title): Scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) has developed a drug to cure Alzheimer's, which he's been testing out on apes. Although the serum would appear to be successful, the unforeseen side effect is to increase the cerebral qualities of the test subjects, leading to an anarchistic ape break out. Rodman's experiments are brought to an abrupt end, and all lab monkeys save one are put down. It is this sole survivor, Caesar (Andy Serkis), who will one day rise to make a stand against his oppressors and their kind.

There are countless criticisms to make of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but the most obvious is the movie's indeterminate genre. As Rodman is forced to adopt Caesar - dressing him up in pants and touring him around in a pram - Rise of the Planet of the Apes could easily be one of those schmaltzy kids' numbers like Andre or Beethoven. Crossbred with the likes of Jurassic Park and The Birds, however, it takes on a befuddled persona with infantile gags and cheesy emotiveness clashing against horrific scenes of suffering and mutilation. And shrieking. Lots and lots of deafening, simian shrieking. It makes for very uneasy viewing.

Taking the moral high ground, Rise of the Planet of the Apes addresses the concepts of animal testing and whether humans should play God, suggesting strongly that we should not, lest we are avenged by spear-wielding monkeys. Valid point, but the problem is that none of the apes in this movie is that easy to warm to.

Andy Serkis reprises his role as a virtual monkey (remember 2005's King Kong? Serkis played the beast) and is frighteningly convincing; Caesar's movements and expressions are impressively simian, but Serkis is almost too convincing, and "frighteningly" would seem to be an apt word. Caesar doesn't offer us any opportunity to side with him; from the outset, he lacks the human qualities that usually endear animal characters to us. He is feral and actually rather bloody scary. For goodness' sake, he gnaws a man's finger off in retribution for a much less serious offense; now, honestly, how are you meant to empathize with a character who has gnawed a man's finger off?

Franco's performance is flat, and for a scientist who apparently cares so much about preserving human life, Rodman seems all too willing to keep a psychotic monkey at large in his neighborhood. John Lithgow - rarely boring onscreen - is the saving grace of the "human" actors as his Alzheimer's-suffering father figure exudes a touch of class and pathos that would otherwise be left wanting.

What often bails this kind of movie out from being an fully fledged calamity are the special effects, and in Rise of the Planet of the Apes we're gifted with an astounding display of motion-capture cinematography (a kind of real-time virtual puppetry). These apes look real - in their matted fur, yellowed teeth and every minute detail of their simian maneuvers and idiosyncrasies. The Golden Gate Bridge finale is quite incredible in its scope, too, and with a different script (it's not even readily apparent what they're doing up there) might have become something of a memorable moment in film history.

If you're nutty about checking out the latest advances in film technology, you might be excused for going to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Otherwise, there is little to get animated about; cinema has seen animals rise up against us humans in considerably more effective ways than this. In the (sort of) words of Charlton Heston, then, God damn films like this to hell.

Will Noble can be reached at
wnoble@praguepost.com