Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The rise of the planet of the apes (PG) 105 minutes 2011

Apes in charge of humans. The Statue of Liberty broken and in ruins. Charlton Heston's closing words; "My God, what have we done?" The ending to the 1968 original Planet of the Apes movie was truly iconic. A TV series and four sequels were to follow including Tim Burton's disastrous 2001 reboot starring Helena Bonham Carter. Now, forty years on, the prequel from Director Rupert Wyatt explaining how we got it all so wrong.

The concept is hardly novel. Genetic scientist, Will Rodman (James "127 Hours" Franco) is on the verge of a major discovery -a cure for degenerative brain diseases. After successfully testing a serum on laboratory chimpanzees, he injects his own Alzheimer-suffering father mankind go so wrong? (John Lithgow) with the new drug and astonishingly, his father recovers, an improved, more intelligent version than before. But a young chimp called Caesar, raised by Rodman himself and also injected with the serum, shows equally impressive signs of intelligence above and beyond the capacity of his kind.

Caesar grows quickly becoming stronger and more powerful and sufficiently intelligent to lead a break out from the so-called ape-sanctuary in which he has been confined, in the process accidentally electrocuting his sadistic jailor, (Tom Felton better known as Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter fame). The climax -ironically not set in New York City - is cleverly constructed, the action scenes exciting and the chimps by now as, if not more, intelligent than their captors.

While Franco and Lithgow are competent, Felton does more than enough to suggest that he is well on the way to unlocking the shackles of his Harry Potter past. Freida "Slumdog Millionaire" Pinto is Franco's love interest but she is given little to do and even less to say. But the stars of the show are without doubt the apes, Andy Serkis, who famously portrayed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, once again leading the way. Motion capture technology – involving hundreds of sensors positioned all over the body – has thankfully confined the need for costumes well and truly to the past Some of the chimps' facial expressions are truly astonishing. The cinematography is equally impressive from Caesar's gymnastics as a baby to his later invasion of the suburbs.

Wyatt's homage to the original is plain enough to see; Caesar gluing a toy statue of liberty, Charlton Heston in a scene on a prison TV, and most notably the Heston’s second most memorable line as he astonishes an ape by demonstrating the power of speech "take your stinking paws off me. Oh and don't leave before the coda, you might miss the best bit.
Good enough to resurrect the franchise. 8/10.

DM
August 2011