Review: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Will (James Franco) shares a tender moment with his protegé Caesar (Andy Serkis).

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by: Rupert Wyatt
Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Tom Felton
Released by: 20th Century Fox

Pondering the inner life of apes is like being on the wrong side of a two-way mirror; we only ever see ourselves. It’s the humanness in chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans to which we respond, and their simianness we reject.

This reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise is more thought-provoking than your average blockbuster, while being just as entertaining. Turns out we lose our planet because of our complacent assumption that we are simpatico with apes. They owe us nothing, and they don’t play by our rules.

It’s appropriate that our protagonist, research scientist Will Rodman (James Franco), should display a catastrophic lack of insight in his quest to treat a disease that erodes self-awareness. His music-teacher dad Charles (John Lithgow) has Alzheimer’s, and Will has a potential cure: a gene therapy that helps the brain repair itself.

But even as it gives Charles his skills back (“Can I play the piano any more?” “Of course you can!” “Well I couldn’t before…”), it also grants Will’s star research subject, Caesar (motion-captured by Andy Serkis), the self-awareness Will lacks. Realising a dog he sees in the Muir Woods outside San Francisco is leashed just like him, Caesar is crushed. He asks, “Am I a pet?”

“No! You’re not a pet,” says Will firmly, and well c’mon, you’d believe James Franco when he turned his caramel eyes and concerned little frown on you, right?

But Will is lying to himself, despite the epic warnings from his vet girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto) that “You’re trying to control things that are not meant to be controlled.” He thinks he can make everything okay for his little guy. What he doesn’t realise is that apes are not humans’ little guys.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an intriguing companion piece to Project Nim, a documentary from the director of Man On Wire that screened at MIFF and is getting a general cinema release on 29 September.

Like Caesar, Nim was taken from his mother at birth, raised as a human infant and taught sign language. And like Will, Nim’s handlers made things up as they went along, seeming uncertain whether to treat him as a child, a pet, a research subject or a dangerous animal.

Oh, these damn dirty apes… when will they learn to take their stinking paws off people?

Nim’s foster family were already struggling to handle him when he was just a few months old; Project Nim was shut down when he bit a teacher in the face. Despite Caesar’s super-intelligence, he, too, accidentally mauls someone, and is sent to chimp jail – a depressing primate facility run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his sociopathic son Dodge (Tom Felton, in a role that isn’t much of a stretch from Draco Malfoy).

Heartbreakingly, Nim and his fellow sign-speaking chimps would always ask for the keys to their cages when anyone came near. Caesar wants the same thing… but he’s savvy enough to assert himself as the leader of his fellow inmates, then break everyone out.

Those familiar with the Planet of the Apes franchise will find various rewarding in-jokes. Caesar befriends an orang-utan named Maurice; actor Maurice Evans played orang-utan Dr Zaius in the original film. Dodge Landon is named after the astronaut characters Dodge and Landon, and Felton gets to say the famous “damn dirty ape” line. Caesar plays with a model of the Statue of Liberty, and there are news reports of a mission to Mars that has ‘gone missing’.

The ape CGI effects – no real apes were used – are incredibly convincing and unselfconscious, lacking the inadvertent hilarity that marred Tim Burton’s 2001 remake. Serkis had already motion-captured a gorilla for King Kong; Caesar’s combination of simian grace and human expression is definitely uncanny, especially when he ‘goes bad’. It’s just a shame that the film feels the need to help mankind’s downfall along with a pandemic subplot straight out of… wait for it… 12 Monkeys.

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