RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - ****

UK release date 11th August 2011.

There’s much to enjoy in British director Rupert Wyatt’s reboot of the famous Fox franchise after a wobbly start. Clearly devised as a foundation for a whole slew of new sequels, its premise is similar to the fourth episode in the classic series, CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972). In that gritty piece of the sci-fi saga Caesar, off-spring of the two apes from the future Cornelius and Zira, gained the power of speech, formed enslaved fellow simians into guerrilla groups and led them against evil humankind who had adopted them as household pets. 

Here, Caesar (motion-captured Andy Serkis) is born in a San Francisco laboratory overseen by scientist Will Rodman (a serviceable James Franco) working on a cure for Alzheimer’s mainly because his father (the always good value John Lithgow) has been afflicted by the disease. The genetic experiments being carried out on all the lab apes cause their increased intelligence, something that becomes more obvious when Will takes Caesar home after his mother is shot dead in a violent incident that closes down the entire pharmaceutical research project. It’s when the grown Caesar, cut off from his own kind, emotionally isolated and caught between two worlds, freaks out and is placed in a prison-like holding facility that the finer points of the taut script finally kicks in. There he galvanises all the other mistreated apes into breaking out and taking action, first against the cruel management, then on the whole of San Francisco. The final stand off between Man and Ape that takes place on the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge is as thrilling as it is spectacular and haunting. 

Rupert Wyatt directed THE ESCAPIST, a prison break drama, with startling parallels to RISE only more ramped up due to the massive increase in budget.  Despite the early scenes needing to be crucially engaging, the WETA Digital effect of the infant Caesar is surprisingly unconvincing and often cartoony in a MR POPPER PENGUINS/ZOOKEEPER way. Happily they improve as Caesar ages and the overall direction becomes more top-drawer as the movie evolves into one of integrity, conscience and muscle. Frieda Pinto as Franco’s love interest has little to do. Nor does Brian Cox (star of THE ESCAPIST) playing the ape holding facility manager. The worst performance comes from David Oyelowo as the corporate suit whose eyes are always on the bottom line. When he gets his just deserts, you’ll be cheering hard let me tell you.

Cox’s sneering son is played by HARRY POTTER’s Tom Felton and it’s he who gets to utter that immortal line from the original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES “Take your stinking paws off me you damned, dirty ape!” In fact one of the joys of watching Wyatt’s superbly kinetic monkey business is the clear line drawn to the original movie and all the references made to it - the rocket launch, the Statue of Liberty, Charlton Heston on TV and many more you’ll find for yourself. Far, far better than Tim Burton’s hopelessly misconceived 2001 effort, this exciting primate allegory has been created with long-term vision and is all the better for it. 

Alan Jones