A film that doesn't know what it wants to be...

Rating: 6/10 (26 August 2013)

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is a reboot/prequel to the 1968 classic 'Planet of the Apes', and the main problem with the film is that it doesn't quite know which of those two things it wants to be. If it's a prequel, then it contains a good backstory for why the earth becomes overrun with apes, but falls at the hurdle of having a time setting that is completely different to the original. It's also got monkeys that look completely different, and the fact that it's too modern means that it can't really function well as a prequel.
If it's a reboot of the franchise, which is what it's intended to be, then we encounter major problems in terms of both story and enjoyability. The film's greatest strength and weakness is its exposition, which is interesting and sets up a great reason as to why a drug is created that ends up changing the apes like this. The sudden hyper intelligence created in apes while finding a cure for Alzheimer's is a fantastic idea, and also allows the writers to deal with the problems of animal testing and cruelty.
The problem is that the whole film is based around this, and there's barely any middle or end. The whole film feels like exposition, and this hinders it completely as a standalone film. It's a prequel without the main event, like seeing "X-men Origins: Wolverine" before seeing the others. It's mostly built on backstory, but we don't know what this is supposed to be the backstory for. A few recent reboots have done this, such as "Batman Begins", but it works in that case, because the rest of the film is so interesting. The final battle scene doesn't even end with the overrunning of the earth, but a peaceful harmony between humans and apes.
That said, James Franco plays a great lead character and Andy Serkis' performance as Caesar, the monkey, is fantastic, proving that motion capture acting is still real acting. Occasionally the quality of the animation slips and the monkeys look less realistic in closeups than in crowd shots. One interesting thing that the film raises is the identity of the villain. As humans, we are trained to see ourselves as the good guys, but for some reason we empathise and cheer for the monkeys' success at numerous points because we see how badly they have been treated by humanity.
It is entirely possible that this film will make a lot more sense and be better overall when the next instalment comes out, but until then, it's a film with too much beginning and not enough middle or end, making it mostly unsatisfying and uninteresting.