Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

As you know, Stirling, I was excited about this movie. I thought that a summer blockbuster about biotechnology would be a lot of fun. Katy was skeptical. And it turns out that she was right to be. Here's why:

It was sooo unrealistic, even allowing for the silliness of the premise. So I'm supposed to believe that at a laboratory in which they test gene therapies on chimpanzees, a laboratory that ostensibly employs experts on chimp physiology, nobody noticed that one of the new arrivals was pregnant? Sorry, no. I'm supposed to believe that a phalanx of riot police, with their rifles at the ready, has to be reminded by their superior to take the safeties off? Nope. I'm supposed to believe that an animal trainer who is beaten for a considerable period of time by a several mature chimpanzees is going to be in any condition to explain what happened the next morning? Again, no. He'd have been lucky to have survived that attack at all; at a minimum, his injuries would have been traumatic. But that brings us to the next problem.

I wanted it to be sort of gory and scary, but the violence never rose beyond the level of the cartoonish. This was a movie that just couldn't deal maturely with the violence at its core. There were several instances in this movie in which the victim of chimp-violence ought to have been, by all rights, a bloody mess. (If a chimp starts wailing on you like that, you ought to thank your lucky stars if your most notable injury derives from a bite to your finger). At least in part, the movie's squeamishness about treating this violence seriously has to be related to its depiction of the apes as unambiguous white-hats. If you start showing what really happens when people get attacked by chimpanzees, the audience might lose its warm, fuzzy feelings for our heroes. Me though, I like an ambiguous hero. I come to the cinema in hopes of experiencing complicated emotions. I prefer to be confronted by the ramifications of the real excesses of the side I'm rooting for. Rise of the Planet of the Apes lacks the moral backbone to even confront its own premise.

Another contributing factor to the film's squeamishness must have been its PG-13 rating. I need to learn not to go see PG-13 films, no matter how interesting they look like they might be. Rarely, something like Super 8 comes along, but most of the time, you just get action movies that privilege visual effects over versimilitude and emotional resonance.

Also related to my complaint of cartoonishess, Katy notes that in the course of the film, although we see many chimpanzees from many angles, standing, sitting, running, whatever, we never see any ape genitals. This, if you've ever seen a chimpanzee, is a LARGE omission. See right. This isn't really a complaint. But once you notice what the movie is NOT showing you, you kind of have to laugh about it.

The characters, the writing, and (maybe) the acting were all terrible. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is inhabited by the dullest, flattest characters that I've seen in a movie in a long time. Let's play a game where we try to sum up all of the main human characters in one word each. This is like shooting fish in a barrel:

• Will: self-absorbed
• Will's girlfriend: pretty
• Will's dad: old
• Will's boss: bastard
• Will's neighbor: jerk
• Lab chimp expert: bearded
• Chimp shelter owner: amoral
• Chimp shelter handler no. 1: sadist
• Chimp shelter handler no. 2: stutters

There. That's everything you need to know about the human characters in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and you didn't even have to spend $7.50 and waste two hours of your life. The writing is just as bad. I think that the acting was pretty lousy too, but it was hard to tell. I mean, what were they supposed to do with those lines? "Will, you have to learn that there are some things that aren't meant to be changed." Seriously, that's the line that's supposed to fire up the protagonist to to re-examine his life's work? It's the turning point of the film! The big moment when Will realizes something about himself upon finally, irrevocably losing his father. And that's the best the screenwriter could do? It's so derivative! It's like the mad scientist version of "You just don't get it, do you?" If you're writing a screenplay, and you see this line in it, write harder! Say something interesting—anything interesting—instead! Ugh, my head hurts. I have to go soon.

In light of all this, it's almost irritating how good a job the director and Andy Serkis do in bringing the character of Caesar to life in mostly wordless scenes. Caesar is a compelling character. If this was the best script they could come up with, they should have striven harder for wordlessness.