Rise of the Planet of the Apes (No-Spoilers)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (No-Spoilers)

            This is a monkey to go bananas over! Once again when I first heard of this film getting made I kind of rolled my eyes but the sooner this movie was to getting released with all the trailers and the good buzz; my interest tipped and began to get excited. I am pleased to say that this film was one of the best movies of the year! Definitely a good popcorn movie that you can easily get lost into from start to finish. The best part was that America agreed with me; raking in over 50 million through opening weekend finishing well over 20 million ahead of what industry experts predicted. In today’s standards; that number is astonishing achievement and well deserved.

            The Planet of the Apes franchise gets the origin treatment in this 20th Century Fox production from director Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist). Man‘s arrogance sets off a chain of events that leads to intelligence in apes and a challenge to our place as the dominant species on the planet. Caesar, the first intelligent ape, is betrayed by humans and rises up to lead his species‘ spectacular race to freedom and the ultimate showdown with Man. In Caesar, WETA – the Oscar–winning visual effects team behind Avatar – have created a CGI ape that delivers a dramatic performance of unprecedented emotion and intelligence. James Franco stars, with Freida Pinto and John Lithgow heading up the rest of the cast.

            Andy Serkis is the real star in this film; as the main monkey Caesar. But because we rarely get to see his face on film; his fame and talent come off un-noticed to some. Serkis is a motion- capture icon; he played Gollum from the lord of the rings films and he also played King Kong in the recent remake. I read one critic calling him a modern day Boris Karloff or Bella Lugosi from the days when they played all kinds of monsters in the Universal picture heydays. I could not agree more; he transforms his body into whatever is asked out of him using facial acting as well as realistic movements that mimic whatever he is trying to copy. But what comes off the best about this film is the flow and pace of this movie. Everything from the opening to the end comes off very planned out and intricate to the whole storyline. The movie is billed as a planet of the apes movie but easily stands out as its own film that easily could have been titled something different. When we first see Caesar; he is a baby that comes off cute and cuddly like curious George but in time you can see things coming together for a grander plan. The best use of telling the audience this is how the score is done and using sounds and music to give us a vibe that this is no normal monkey without screaming it out to the audience. Rise of the planet of the apes excels on keeping you interested not only by visuals but almost all other element you can think of but smell with ease and preciseness. This is not James Franco’s best performance but is what was needed from him because the apes are the stars of the film. The cast was great and I thought it was interesting that Tom Helton; the actor who played Malfoy in the Harry Potter films was even more unlikable in this movie alone in contrast to an 8 film span of being the bad boy. I really don’t want to spoil anything but I strongly recommend this movie to anyone. I cannot believe this film got made in the first place but will easily be a part of my top ten films of 2011. Grab a friend, spouse, family member or anyone and go see this movie now!

4 out of 4 stars.