REVIEW: Rise of the Planet of the Apes Can't Sink Much Lower
I could describe Rise of the Planet of the Apes as Escape from Alcatraz, except with apes, but that would make it sound like a movie you might actually want to see. I could also describe it as an "origin story" that supposedly explains, albeit in a rather indirect fashion, how apes became evolved enough to wear black leather-trimmed tunics and walk around speaking in cultured voices that sound suspiciously like those of Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall. But even if that's the movie director Rupert Wyatt thinks he's making -- and the one James Franco thinks he's starring in -- that's not the movie I saw.
The backstory told in Rise of the Planet of the Apes is infinitely less compelling -- and less inspired -- than the one told in Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 Planet of the Apes, in which astronaut Charlton Heston crash-lands on a planet where apes are king and humans are second-class citizens. According to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the whole thing began with a dream: San Francisco scientist Will Rodman (Franco) hopes the cure for Alzheimer's lies in a serum he's been injecting into apes. His crusade is personal: His father, Charles (John Lithgow), is suffering from the disease. (Its chief effect, apparently, is to make him play the piano very, very badly.) When Will's most important guinea-ape is shot and killed after having a major temper tantrum, it's discovered that she was pregnant when captured; apparently, unbeknownst to everyone in the lab, she gave birth in her cage and hid her baby behind a ledge in there. Or something.
Will takes the baby chimp home, and Charles, in a brief moment of non-piano-playing lucidity, christens him Caesar. It soon becomes clear that Caesar possesses above-average intelligence; the serum injected into his mom had made her supersmart too, and because it also changed her genetic makeup, she was able to pass this gift along to her offspring. Will raises Caesar as if he were a son, helped along by his girlfriend, pretty zoo doctor Caroline (Freida Pinto). He even teaches the chimp sign language. But because Will is so busy being a scientist and chimp-dad, he doesn't have time to go see Project Nim, and so he doesn't realize that somehow or other, his experiment is doomed to fail. After Caesar bites the finger off a mean neighbor, he's incarcerated in a supposedly clean, pleasant and humane ape facility run by Brian Cox. Run, don't walk, little chimp!
Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- which was written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who adapted their ideas, as the writers of the earlier franchise did, from Pierre Boulle's novel La Planète des Singes) -- is too earnest and dour to be a silly bit of summer fun, but it's not exactly scientifically sound, either. I kept waiting for a brainy chimp to be catapulted into space. For one brief, hopeful moment, I wondered if John Lithgow, upon being injected with his son's miracle serum, might turn into a chimp.
That would have been something, but no go. By the time Caesar and his fellow imprisoned apes stage their jailbreak -- the beginning of a rampage that eventually takes them to the Golden Gate Bridge, ostensibly because a.) for there are cables for them to climb on and swing from but more likely because b.) it's there -- the movie's grayed-out look and heavy-duty computer-generated enhancements begin to lose their charms, which are puny to begin with.
Caesar is played, with the help of a motion-capture leotard and lots of computer flimflam, by Andy Serkis, and though Serkis has played an ape before -- he provided the eyes and soul of Peter Jackson's King Kong -- he's unconvincing here. It's hard to say if the chief problem is the technology or the performance; it's probably a combination of both. A computer-generated ape is so much less human-seeming than a real one. Caesar's eyes, in particular, look all wrong -- they're piercing rather than winsome, and they look hostile even when he's supposedly doing something sweet, like clambering into daddy Will's arms for a cuddle. We need to sympathize with Caesar for the movie to work, but from infancy, he just looks shifty and untrustworthy.
I'm not so sure about Franco, either. He's a gifted actor, but he seems to be sleepwalking, or at least just shuffling listlessly, through Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It's possible he doesn't care about the movie at all: Could it be one of his winking little experiments, a gag along the lines of pretending to host the Oscars while not really doing anything? Franco has become so meta- that it's almost impossible to take anything he does, or any character he plays, at face value. It doesn't help that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the kind of picture in which one character, about to witness some dastardly procedure visited upon some poor unsuspecting laboratory animal, announces, "I didn't authorize that!" only to have another stride in just in time to say, "No -- I did!" Who's really in charge here? It's impossible to know. But these apes will have to evolve a lot further before they do any more rising.
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Comments
WTF kinda review is this? Ppl are buzzing abt Andy Serkis getting an Oscar nom and u say he was not convincing? The trailers are enuff for us to judge that he has done an amazing job..
As for the movie, if you cant get ur self into the planet of the apes movie folk lore.. its ur loss.. Dissing on a very enjoyable movie is not class.. go find a new job
and yes.. on RT.. it is certified 84% fresh..
I've seen this alot recently in the film-criticsm community. People wanna make a name for themselves by being contrary to the popular flow of opinion. The problem with calling a genuinely good film bad, just to get attention, means that you've undermined the value of your own opinion for life.
With regard to this film, I have certain British critics whose opinion I need to see before being able to better judge if this film's worth seeing or not when it gets to the UK.
Not sure why Franco is in movies at all, he is always that "first dude we saw on the street so we decided to give him a role". Gifted actor? Please. Maybe he is passable for B movies and stoner comedies, but I don't see him showing any kind of character depth, even in his more serious roles. He is simply blunt and pointless actor.
I am sure this review was written some time before the other reviews started coming in, so I am not sure why people think this is a reaction to popular opinion. It is simply an honest appraisal of the movie as seen by this reviewer. Even the positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes contain phrases like "the movie you expect, nothing less, nothing more" and " a fundamentally mediocre film. The problem with movie ranking sites like Rotten Tomatoes is that the rotten/fresh ranking is entirely too subjective, and people use the aggregate percentage rather than reading the reviews themselves.
Yes, if there's one thing Stephanie Zacharek is known for, it's panning movies everyone else likes just to make a name for herself. Like, for instance, how she hated all those Harry Potter movies. (Wait, what? Oh.)
The art of subjectivity is lost on your hive-mind mentality.
I know reviews, despite what some arrogant bigots may say, are 100% subjective, but when a negative review comes along that contradicts EVERYTHING that EVERY positive review, of which there are many, makes mention of, you really have to question the so called "critic" in question. Sorry.
All the bad points in your reviews, and I mean ALL of them, are exactly the things that have been hailed by everyone else as being great, namely Andy Serkis’ performance, which you say isn’t very good.
I’m sorry, but maybe you should watch the film again without rolling your eyes.
I'm not surprised one bit that she didn't like this, she seems to hate on just about every movie that's not made for the art house crowd. That being said, everyone is entitled to their opinions, I'm just never going to base my movie going experiences on her reviews.
Here we go again. People are entitled to their opinions, but I don't think Stephanie Zacharek is the type of person who would READ Movieline. I'm sure Mrs. Zacharek is a fine writer, but a bad fit for this site.
I never take this reviewer very seriously! She is very inconsistent! I loved to watch The smurfs 3D with my son, But I don't think is a better movie than Rise of the Apes like she reviewed already.
Thank you Movieline! I'm so tried of reading good reviews of a movie that's so obviously awful. Props for keeping it real.
I am not even sure what this means. That Movieline should only have bad writers? (None of them are, by the way.)
But hey whatever happened to Elvis Mitchell? One day he was here, and the next day he was gone.
I love reading Stephanie Zacharek. Even though I sometimes disagree with her (and still can't believe she actually LIKED that art house stinker "Wedding Crashers"), but she's always entertaining and usually insightful.
I guess I am just a crazy kind of person who doesn't base my enjoyment of a movie critic on how much we agree on the qualities of the same movies but on the quality of writing and insight they bring to their reviews.
I don't normally get involved with discussions like this, mainly because they are pointless. But I personally enjoy reading Stephanie's reviews. I know of at least two times when I couldn't disagree with her more, but I still enjoyed her reviews none the less.
I don't understand why people think critics must love every single movie they like and hate every movie they hate. That's ludicrous. Stephanie goes into lengthy detail to explain the movie's premise, her reactions to it, and usually does a good job of leaving out any spoilers not already revealed in the publicity for the film. She even begins this specific review by stating that this is the film SHE saw. She's not claiming to be the alpha and omega, she's giving a review of the movie she saw, which is the whole point!
So far Movieline has avoided the kind of crap that plagues other entertainment site comment sections. I'm sad that that is no longer true, simply because a critic didn't like a specific film that someone else thinks will be cool.
I have read movie, TV, music and book reviews that I thought got it all wrong. Someone might trash a song that I think is genius or recommend a book that I gave up after the first chapter. But I didn't curse out the critic. I just did what normal people do. I thought, "Guess they like different things than I do."
I don't understand the point of these angry comments bullying and chastising a critic because he or she didn't give a review you agreed with. If it was badly written, confusing, or tried to impress with two many seventeen-syllable words, that I could understand. But if you are going to get upset simply because a review wasn't as positive or as negative as you thought it should be, then my advice is to stop reading reviews.
So she didn't like it. Nobody need take exception.
In the general scheme of things, who really gives a shit?
See the movie and form your own opinion instead of adopting someone else's.
Yes, how dare critics and others like a movie that has no appeal to you!
For shame on them, I say!
Hold up . . . since when is Wedding Crashers considered an art house film?
I do know one thing that I find useful about Zacharek's reviews: I disagree with every single one of them, so if she likes a movie, I know I won't, and if she doesn't like a movie, then I know I will. It's quite the effective litmus test for knowing which movies to see.
Seems like this review's a bit harsh. I normally come here after reading other sites' reviews just to make sure they line up, but I have to say it seems like movieline's the only hater that I've read so far. Although I will admit from the previews and trailers, your description of Franco is spot on.
And by the same token, How dare a critic trash a film that YOU are really looking forward to!!!!
Fair comment; and I agree -- though there is a sense she fits with Stu Vanairsdale. I'm glad to see she's making a living reviewing films, and that Movieline recognized her as a prize reviewer, but she's a bit like Hillary within the Obama administration -- out of place; her kind of snark somehow seems of a very different kind that the sort you mostly see here: she's not so much desiring to draw blood. She was remote at Salon, but I like that good conversations had a chance to develop from her reviews. The same thing should be possible here, but WITH a different reviewer (I don't think we all only want to comment when there's zero chance we'll feel exposed). With the rich getting ever richer, it's possible that the future for refined artists will once again rest with aristocratic sponsorship. "Sweet daughter, to help you properly shape your thoughts and refine your style, let me introduce you to your new tutor ..."
Just want to echo Tommy Marx above. I love reading Stephanie Zacharek's reviews and followed her at Salon and continue to appreciate her intelligence here.
(And, frankly, I'm glad to see Elvis Mitchell is gone. I never liked him at the Times and was dismayed to see him setting up shop at Movieline.)
I liked the review. Still not sure if I think the movie will be good or not. However, I have questions that must be answered. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR THERE TO BE SO GOD DAMNED MANY SUPER INTELLIGENT APES ALL OF A SUDDEN??!!! Is there some giant skyscraper laboratory full of apes somewhere? The preview makes it look like there's a whole army of them. What kind of lab keeps thousands of living apes in it?
I haven't read enough of the other reviews or other people's comments in order to give my opinion on whether or not I should like this movie, this review, or anything else for that matter.
Couple of points. Sounds like you are an expert in chimp human cgi eyemovement facial expressions "the eyes are all wrong" which i dont think you couldpossibly be. How are they right secondly i think you sunk your ship whenyou called franco a gifted actor. What has he done that is different than that monotone voice in every movie hes been in same expressions same voice some inflection. Hes eye candy for the ladies so they have something to look at while thier with thier boyfriends/husbands geekoidish needs are met. he balances the equations so a couple can go to a movie thats all hes there for.
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