Rise of The Planet of The Apes

3 Stars

Swift and nimble, like the rising ape at its center, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is gratifyingly free of the usual big-budget blockbuster weight and volume.

After so many galumphing origin stories involving human-based superheroes, it's nice to get one about a simian revolutionary in training, and one that really does stand alone as a satisfying prequel requiring little or no knowledge or nostalgia for the five "Planet of the Apes" pictures of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In the fourth film in the original series, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" (1972), Roddy McDowall played Caesar, the soulful, secretly articulate son begat by Cornelius (played by McDowall in earlier films) who ends up leading the uprising against the ruling human class. "Rise" spins a clever variation on that film (which was pretty sharp in its allusions to the black power movement, reconfigured for a two-species clash), set in modern-day San Francisco.

For a little while, the humans have the upper hand, and since the main human in the story is played by James Franco, one gets a generally warm feeling toward our species even though Franco's character is supposed to be cold and driven. The "127 Hours" Oscar nominee plays a pharmaceutical research scientist whose father (John Lithgow) is suffering from Alzheimer's and whose mission is to develop a drug to cure the disease.

A test run on a lab simian goes very badly, but the scientist takes an orphaned baby chimpanzee, Caesar, into his custody. Life is good; the ape is raised humanely and, like Lithgow's character, responds extraordinarily well to the trial drug. Freida Pinto of "Slumdog Millionaire" beams as the primatologist who enters their lives. Cognitive skills -- through the roof, for both species. Director Rupert Wyatt ("The Escapist") takes Caesar from infancy to age 8 in a series of deft transitional scenes, the key one showcasing a running, swinging, climbing Caesar cutting loose in the Muir Woods redwood forest outside San Francisco.

Andy Serkis is the actor underneath the digital Caesar. While "Rise" is effects-heavy, the latest performance-capture technology, advanced to a new level by "Avatar" and further developed here, allows Serkis' expressivity as an actor to come through more fully than in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (Serkis played Gollum) and the "King Kong" remake.

For much of "Rise," the adult Caesar finds himself confined to a lousy, hard-knocks life in a primate facility more like the prison in the 1947 melodrama "Brute Force." The facility is run by the calmly sinister Brian Cox and his sniveling son, played by Tom Felton. (Felton played Draco Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" franchise and really should play someone nice fairly soon or it'll be all over, typecasting-wise.)

There's a drawback to the photorealistic digital effects in "Rise," supervised by Joe Letteri. I don't get much pleasure from human-on-ape violence; in the old "Planet of the Apes" franchise, the quaintly realized makeup and mask design helped the medicine go down a little more easily. Here, the realism threatens to get too rough for the confines of the story.

Yet director Wyatt never lingers on the dread for long. (This is a more age-appropriate PG-13 movie for a 12-year-old than, say, "Cowboys & Aliens.") We're always with Caesar in spirit, and though the story depends on the story going the way it goes, we rarely feel as if we're being set up for the next round of pathos or revenge.

The result is a movie far livelier than the Tim Burton franchise reboot of a decade ago. The climactic clash between apes in revolt and Bay Area police on the Golden Gate Bridge overstays its welcome, but not cripplingly so. Screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Andrea Silver pepper the story of Caesar's rise to glory with allusions to the original, the most obvious being the "take your stinking paws off me!" zinger uttered by Charlton Heston in the original '68 film, here put in the mouth of a less sympathetic character.

While it's effects-heavy, the movie itself does not feel heavy. Consider it a fanciful extension of the recent and very fine documentary "Project Nim." It's safe to assume that both chimpanzee Nim and his human overseers would've found something to enjoy in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

 

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"Rise of The Planet of The Apes" Movie Trailer

 

"Rise of The Planet of The Apes" Movie Review

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense and frightening sequences of action and violence).

Running time: 1:50.

Cast: James Franco (Will); Freida Pinto (Caroline); John Lithgow (Charles); Andy Serkis (Caesar); Brian Cox (Landon); Tom Felton (Dodge).

Credits: Directed by Rupert Wyatt; written by Rick Jaffa and Andrea Silver; produced by Peter Chernin and Dylan Clark. A Twentieth Century Fox release.

 

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