Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) dir. Rupert Wyatt
THE FILM CORNER RATING:
TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND
HARRY'S CHAR BROIL & DINING LOUNGE
Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto,
John Lithgow, Brian Cox, David Oyelowo, Tyler Labine, David Hewlett
Review By Greg Klymkiw
I have absolutely no knee-jerk prejudice against remakes, reboots, sequels or prequels as the number of good and/or even great ones is impressive. I do, however, have a problem with bad and/or mediocre and/or (worst of all) unnecessary movies - whatever they may be. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, save for the millions of dollars it bamboozled out of moviegoers, has no real reason to exist, at least not in the pathetic form offered up like so much slop in a soup kitchen..
The movie is about NOTHING and rife with long, dull scenes that go nowhere. The screenplay, such as it is, has not (I suspect) actually been written, but assembled with alphabet blocks by chimpanzees - not very bright ones at that. The chimps deserving the blame for their less than stellar work are Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver whose credits include - ahem - The Relic (a watchable monster movie), An Eye for An Eye (a watchable vigilante movie) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (a watchable thriller). The accent here is clearly on "watchable" - an achievement not attained by Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Not only have these two simian scribes delivered an inconsequential plot that's about nothing, but they've populated the landscape with the dullest roles imaginable. Oh, and if anyone thinks I'm merely picking on the writers - I am. They're also the producers of this thing.
Bottom line: This movie is not worthy of the Original Five (kind of like the National Hockey League's Original Six), a tough act to follow as far as movies go (and clearly never attained by members of the NHL post-Original-Six either). In contrast to the work generated by the writers (and I reiterate, producers) of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the collective writing talents behind the five original Planet of the Apes movies wrote screenplays for the likes of Frank Capra, George Stevens, David Lean, Martin Ritt, William Wyler, Sidney Lumet, Franco Zeffirelli, John Frankenheimer, Roger Corman and Martin Scorsese.
This alone should be enough to rest my case.
In addition to the abominable screenplay, the writers (with their producer caps on) assembled a cast worthy of the monkey house of purported characters they created. Leading man James (Spring Breakers) Franco is one of my favourite actors, but here he sleepwalks through his part as a chemical manufacturing scientist who creates a drug meant to cure Alzheimer's that instead kills humans whilst creating a new super species of apes. John Lithgow goes through the motions of delivering a professional by-the numbers performance as Franco's addled Dad who is briefly revived by Sonny-Jim's chemical discovery before plunging into further madness and finally death. Frieda Pinto parades her vacuous beauty about whilst exuding intellect as blank as an unformatted floppy disk in the role of Franco's zoo veterinarian girlfriend; a real stretch unless one believes veterinary colleges are in the business of graduating animal doctors with less intelligence than their patients. Last, but certainly not least on this ship of fools is the non-entity that is David Oyewolo, who plays the least compelling corporate villain ever committed to celluloid. His performance is so bland that not even good writing would have saved him in the thankless role of the pharmaceutical company baddie who - wait for it - is more interested in profits than science.
Delivering exceptional work in spite of nothing resembling writing employed in the creation of his role as an animal shelter administrator, Brian Cox, one of the world's greatest living actors, might have actually benefited if something as unimaginative as a recognizable archetype might have been devised to allow for some virtuoso scenery-chewing. Alas, this was not to be. Then there are stellar performances from actors playing the supporting scum-buckets. They acquit themselves so well that one wishes they either had a better movie to be in (like Tom Felton as the vile animal shelter attendant) or David Hewlett as Franco's nasty next door neighbour who hates monkeys and berates old men with Alzheimer's. Hewlett's so good, he should have been cast as the central corporate baddie instead of the aforementioned bland loser they DID cast.
And Lest We Forget - Andy Serkis, the somewhat overrated CGI body double who previously and famously aped (as it were) the character of Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Here he gets to play Franco's pet chimp Caesar who is more intelligent than Albert Einstein and leads a grand monkey revolt. Don't get me wrong, Serkis IS a good actor, but what he delivered for Jackson finally worked as well as it did because the writing was generally good and the CGI was stunning. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the non-writing, ho-hum direction and obvious CGI all conspire to give us so little to root for that the gymnastics of Serkis's apery is all for naught.
While a solid, simple plot can have considerable merit in providing a perfectly manufactured coat hanger to adorn with cool shit, this pathetic new sequel/prequel/remake/reboot or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be is so lacklustre that I struggled in vain whilst waiting for something - ANYTHING - of any consequence to happen. It didn't.
In a nutshell, here's the plot - or rather, grocery list:
Scientist discovers miracle drug to cure Alzheimer's.
Said drug turns chimp into Super Chimp.
Alas, same drug kills scientist's Dad.
Scientist raises chimp as own child.
Girlfriend pops in and out of movie to smile stupidly.
Chimp gets into all manner of shenanigans.
Chimp bites finger off next door neighbour.
Chimp is incarcerated in animal shelter full of apes.
Chimp leads ape revolt on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
Chimp leads apes to freedom amongst ancient Redwood trees.
Next door neighbour, afflicted with deadly virus, casually goes to work as airline pilot, finger miraculously intact and spreads virus worldwide.
What again, I ask you, is this movie actually ABOUT?
The original 1968 Arthur P. Jacobs production of Planet of the Apes was dazzlingly directed by the great Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton), superbly adapted by Michael (Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia) Wilson and Rod (The Twilight Zone) Serling from Pierre Boulle's brilliant novel "La planète des singes" and featuring a stellar cast that attacked their roles with relish. And what roles they were! The makers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes might have thought to take their cues from the original source for the necessary inspiration. In addition to having a great square-jawed hero in the form of the cynical, no-nonsense astronaut Taylor (Charlton "GOD" Heston) the original movie boasted a terrific array of colourful supporting characters that great actors like Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans played to the hilt. The only thing the Rise team might have been influenced by was the role of Nova in the original, a staggeringly beautiful, but equally blank leading lady. Smartly, this character in the original was mute whereas this awful new reboot chooses to allow Freida Pinto to open her mouth - thus forcing the already leaden lines she's been given to thud to the floor with greater force than a body hitting the pavement from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Planet of the Apes was, still is and always will be a great picture. Let's forget, however, that the moronic Tim Burton remake even exists. Though dreadful as it is, it's fucking Rembrandt compared to Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
The first time I saw Schaffner's Planet of the Apes was as a nine-year-old lad, sitting in the front row of Winnipeg's long-shuttered picture palace the Metropolitan Theatre (where Guy Maddin eventually shot Isabella Rossellini in the stunning My Dad is 100 Years Old). It was the first time I got gooseflesh in a movie. So profound was my experience that it was, indeed, the movie that compelled/condemned me to a life of servitude under the pleasurable shackles of motion pictures. I have seen the picture well over 100 times since and made a point of watching it with my then-10-year-old daughter during an Ape marathon prior to seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes when it first opened in 2011. If truth be told, I was really excited to see the new picture which I suppose is what added profoundly to my eventual disappointment.
Schaffner's picture is a genuine classic. It holds up as powerfully as any great piece of superbly executed populist cinema should. Mysterious, thrilling, funny, intelligent, propulsive in all the right ways and a movie replete with thought-provoking thematic elements including that of religious fanaticism suppressing both science and new ideas, the topsy-turvy look at humans fulfilling the role of "dumb beast", notions of time and time travel and the devastating effects of war. Neither these themes nor the picture has dated.
I have always maintained that its cinematic storytelling techniques are so classical and finely wrought and its technical virtuosity so ahead of its time that the movie could be released virtually untouched and I suspect it could/would be as big a hit NOW as it once was. Most tellingly to me was just how compelling the original movie was for my little girl. She remained stapled into the chesterfield, her eyes transfixed upon my hi-def monitor and nary one bathroom break. The discussion we had about the movie afterwards centred on the IDEAS as much as it did about the story and how entertaining it was.
No similar discussion occurred after watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes because, frankly, it's really about NOTHING. The stakes for the characters in the original film were always tied to the issues it explored, whereas the stakes for all the characters in Rise are rooted in not much of anything - save for James Franco's selfish, whiny and somewhat unconvincing need to prove that his new drug will work.
As a kid in the years between 1968 and 1970 when the first sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes finally appeared, one of the things that haunted me - nay, OBSESSED me! - was a lingering question I had at the devastating ending to the first film. When Chuck (Jesus H. Christ) Heston rides deeper into the "Forbidden Zone" and discovers (thanks to the writing genius that was Rod Serling for coming up specifically with the ending) that he is NOT on another planet, but a nuclear-war-devastated Earth in the future, I was chomping at the bit to learn what our astronaut would find in the wasteland AFTER he discovered a half-buried Statue of Liberty in the sand.
What Heston finally discovered (along with James Franciscus, a new astronaut who follows a rescue-mission trajectory to the monkey planet) was a crumbling Manhattan beneath the desert populated by Doomsday-Bomb-worshipping mutants with telepathic powers who were about to be attacked by an army of war-thirsty gorillas.
Jesus Christ Almighty, indeed!
Just the plot alone as penned by veteran screenwriter Paul (Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Murder on the Orient Express) Dehn was original enough to keep one riveted. More than the plot, though, was that - AGAIN - the movie was actually ABOUT something.
Even though the picture is a perfunctorily directed by Ted Post (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force and the genuinely wonderful Go Tell The Spartans) Post, Dehn's superb screenplay challenged us with notions of blind militaristic rage (including a peace march as reflective of the Vietnam War, which could have - in parallel contrast - provided a backdrop to the new picture with respect to America's idiotic "War on Terror"), religious fundamentalism justifying war (from both the apes AND the humans) and most terrifyingly, the whole notion of peace through superior firepower.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes has no such ideas. Though it's set in contemporary times and could have explored terrorism, blind militarism, rising fascism/fundamentalism, the financial crisis, the oil crisis - any manner of issues facing the world today, it chooses Instead, to focus upon the corruption inherent in pharmaceutical companies, Alzheimer's disease and cruelty to animals. These issues are not without merit, but they're just there to serve the non-plot, almost as a necessary evil to be touched upon and dropped quickly in favour of dazzling CGI.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes appeared a year after Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even at the tender age of 12 I remember thinking, "What is this shit? A sequel? They blew up the fucking Earth!" (I had a salty tongue even back then.) When I saw the picture - as a kid and even now after umpteen viewings - I was dazzled. The real star is again screenwriter Paul Dehn as opposed to actor-turned-competent director Don Taylor who, in fairness, DID direct a fine’ 70s version of The Island of Dr. Moreau with Burt Lancaster and the cult sci-fi classic The Final Countdown. But what a GREAT script! What first-rate sci-fi!!!
From a plot standpoint, Dehn delivered a perfectly plausible twist via a new character called Dr. Milo who, like Cornelius and Zira, was an ape scientist who defied the "law" of fundamentalism, resurrected and repaired Chuck Heston's spaceship and then all three simians of science followed a backwards trajectory just before the Earth is destroyed and wind up BACK in time. This was also a clearly fascinating way to utilize the notions of time and space and, in its own way, delve into quantum physics and the early postulations of parallel universe theory. This third official Apes sequel delivered up clever satirical goods, explored issues of women's' rights (plus animal rights - far more effectively than Rise), immoral interrogation techniques and most importantly studied the world of fanaticism/militarism within higher levels of government bureaucracy and how THIS is where the true power often lies and where sick, corrupt values run rampant.
What it does here so magnificently is how it offers up a great villain in the form of a German-born scientist/political advisor (a la Henry Kissinger) played by the wonderful actor Eric Braeden (who had a hugely successful career as a soap opera TV star, but most notably appeared in the great ‘70s sci-fi thriller Collosus: The Forbin Project from screenwriter James Bridges and the underrated director Joseph Sargent). Braeden is such a nasty, vicious, homicidal government bureaucrat and his great performance and superb characterization thanks to Dehn's writing puts the lacklustre aforementioned villain in Rise to complete and utter shame.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, is as sharp a sequel as the third instalment - replete with great writing from Paul Dehn and the added bonus of thrilling direction from J. Lee Thompson, the man who gave us the brilliant, original, utterly chilling Cape Fear as well as some of the greatest action epics of all time like North West Frontier, Taras Bulba and The Guns of Navarone. This particular sequel tells us about the rise of Caesar, the ape child of Cornelius and Zira who leads the simians in revolt against their human oppressors.
Conquest is the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes most closely resembles, yet pales most mightily against. Conquest deals head on with the issue that plagued (and continues to plague) America most doggedly - that of slavery and, includes good dashes of America's susceptibility to right wing government rule. A thoroughly effective repellent performance from Don Murray as the fascist California governor racing to eventually become President of the United States (he and his minions always wear black-coloured uniforms hearkening to both Nazism and Italian Fascism) is so politically charged - not just for its time, but like all great classics, resonates in a contemporary context. Rise has no such villain and virtually NO political context. I'll not speak too much about Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the fifth official sequel and perhaps the weakest entry in the series, but even still, in its exploration of the early beginnings of the fundamentalism that eventually grips even the apes, it makes the new film look so puny in comparison.
Rupert Wyatt is a dreadful director. The pace of Rise is herky-jerky and the final action set piece on the Golden Gate Bridge - which should be spectacular - is yet another madly constructed action scene from a director who couldn't helm action to save his life.
The worst element of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is in its over-reliance upon CGI. The effects are relatively effective, but they're not there to serve the story, but to merely serve themselves. The stunning makeup effects for the apes designed by John Chambers in the ‘60s blow ALL the CGI totally away. The makeup allows great actors - throughout the original Apes series to actually deliver real performances and, thanks to terrific writing, inject considerable life into the proceedings.
Rise from the Planet of the Apes is, in contrast, moviemaking at its most dreadful - bereft of ideas, good writing and direction from someone who has a vision and/or the virtuosity to create popular cinema of the highest order. Perhaps the most disgusting thing about the new film is that it fails to acknowledge the author of the original novel and the screenwriters (primarily Paul Dehn and Serling) of the original series in the head credits. This is ultimately a disgrace.
Do yourself a favour and either skip Rise of the Planet of the Apes or, if you feel you must see the picture at all, try to watch the original films first.
You'll see the difference!
