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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 08/21/2011 : 13:35:36
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I did a search to see if this film's been covered b4, but couldn't find one. Apologies if I missed it.
Anyway, this is a 3-ring Serkis all the way. As Caesar the genetically modified chimp who becomes a firm but fair leader with both heart and mind, he just walks away with every scene.
To be fair, despite Rupert Wyatt's exciting recounting of how Caesar himself rose to such skilled prominence, what's left on the characterization table to share with the supporting cast is pretty crumb-like.
James Franco has the most screentime, but all his relationships are so sketchy he's made to fall back on his by-now-familiar catalog of expressions - winsome charm, concerned level one, concerned level two, tunnel-visioned concentration.
Here he's Will, a talented scientist immersed in well-paid research on genetically related chemical cures for Alzheimers. He's driven by more than the professional to make progress since he shares his home with his once-brilliant father with the disease. Both actors are fully capable of all the nuances required for the relationship, but Wyatt continually sacrifices the emotional in favour of the material.
Sadly, that's also the case for Frida Pinto as Will's love interest, and particularly for Brian Cox in a thankless portrait of the stereotypical soft-spoken and duplicitious brute who runs the so-called primate rescue facility in which Caesar is eventually incarcerated.
So the film's story - clearly presaging the sequels to come - tracks Will's adoption of adorable little baby Caesar when the lab's experiments go oh-so-wrong. Because Will, now working on his own from home, illegally continues the experiments, we get to see the young ape develop with some pretty unusal abilities.
Enough clues are planted to ensure that your niggling questions about how apes - who just might in this version of the world - just might take over San Franscisco - how they might actually take over the world.
Just be sure you sit through the (interminable) end credits - because those planted clues have already started sprouting their answers.
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randall
"I like to watch."
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Posted - 01/19/2012 : 02:36:56
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Fairly underwhelmed, considering all the hype. It's capably done and cleverly spun, but anyone holding banners for an Andy Serkis Best Actor nom is rooting for the potential, not the performance. [He was *much* better as Gollum.]
I did love that not only were no apes harmed, no apes were even *employed*.
All that said, it's leagues better than Tim Burton's curious remake, and does leave an opening for a plausible sequel. This is 20th Century-Fox, which *never* lets a franchise get away [ALIEN, anyone?], so you can bet you'll eventually see it. |
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes
