Rise of the Planet of the Apes Review

I’m kind of on the fence with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I liked the story. I liked the special effects. My problem was the characters. I did a great job in explaining the origins of the original Planet of the Apes, but for movies like this to seem plausible, it requires dumb main characters making dumb decisions. It was these dumb decisions, which annoyed me enough to not like the movie as much as I would like to like it. Let me break it down.

The story. Was it a good story? For Planet of the Apes fans, it was a great story. For non-Planet of the Apes fans, it was ok. One of the best approaches of this movie was humanizing the monkeys. It told a great story of how this genetically enhanced intelligent monkey came to existence and why in the future, the monkey’s dominated the earth, and the humans eventually became extinct. The monkey side of the story was the best part of this movie. The writers took cues from the past regarding slavery and mistreatment, which eventually became the monkey’s angst toward human beings. As time went on, the monkey’s unite, escape their shelter-like prison, and find refuge in the redwood forest. The other side of the story is the humans who used monkey’s as guinea pigs with kind hearted scientist that wanted cure mankind of Alzheimer’s disease. It was the human part of the story and the stupid decisions they made which is why this movie was ridiculous. Mesh the two together, you have a great monkey movie with stupid humans.

The characters. Did I like the characters? The main character is Ceasar, a born-intelligently-enhanced chimp who was born by a mother chimp on whom the scientist experimented. The special effects used to create this monkey were amazing. The filmmakers used the Avatar computer generated technique whereas they used an actual human (played by Andy Serkis) to create the movements and facial movements of the CGI-monkey. Him and the other monkeys out-acted the humans. The scientist played by James Franco was stupid. The girl-friend played by Freida Pinto was a pointless character that did nothing. The CEO of the drug company was stupid. Practically all the human roles were stupid people. Further explanation on this will be in my Chazztastic Thoughts. But I understood why they had to be stupid with stupid decisions, but because if they made the correct decision, the apes would never had risen.

The special effects. Though special effects were the best part of the movie, I don’t think it was more cool than fighting robots, magical children, or an American superhero icon. As cool as these intelligent monkey’s looked, acted, and moved, one problem I had with the special effects is trying to keep the size and scale of the monkeys consistent. Sometimes they looked bigger and sometimes they looked smaller. Unlike fighting robots whereas as long as they are as big as houses and buildings, they will look real, but the intelligent monkeys can’t realistically be taller than humans (except for the gorilla). And, to me, how big and small they were when compared to humans had some inconsistency. Why does that matter? Because consistency in a movie adds to the plausibility of the movie which I look for in movies like this.

Now for some Chazztastic Thoughts:

• The Scientist. The scientist was played by James Franco. Did he ever look like a scientist to get this role?
• The Veternarian. His love interest was played by Freida Pinto. Besides the 2-min where we see her as a veternarian, did her character even matter in the story?
• The Lab Assistant. He gets sick. He works for a multi-million dollar drug research facility. You know he has health insurance. Why didn’t you just go to the doctor?
• The CEO. Did bother any of you that the CEO of DRUG research facility was a black man?
• The Neighbor. If you were really scared for you children that a monkey was living next door, why didn’t you just constantly complain to Animal Control to get the intelligent monkey taken away? If he did that while the intelligent monkey was young, the movie would’ve been done a long time ago.
• The Intelligent Monkeys. The drug they were exposed to was for intelligence. Why did they eventually have super strength and near-invulnerability?
• The Police. Now, if you get 911 calls of monkeys running wild in the city, wouldn’t first reaction be that they must be rabid, a threat to humanity, and should be killed on site.
• Where were the news helicopters?

I can keep going on with my Chazztastic Thoughts. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m really on the fence with this movie. Though I liked the special effects and was ok with the story, the characters in the story was too stupid for me which was an insult to my intellect. On that note, I rate the movie: BlueRay rental or HD Cable TV. As for paying for it on the movie theaters, if there’s nothing else to watch and you really want to watch a movie, then it’s watchable. But the feeling you get from the movie theater is the exact same feeling as if you watched it on Blue Ray/HD Cable.