Solid story with a strong central character delivered by great CGI (SPOILERS)

Rating: Null/10 (7 December 2011)

Having given enough for my money to summer blockbusters in previous years, I decided to sit out all the massive hits of 2011 and pick them up on DVD later on down the road. So far my decision was proved to be a good one and I threw the new Planet of the Apes movie into the same pile – especially since I only found out such a film existed a few weeks before it came out. As it turns out though, Rise is actually one of the better blockbusters out this year – not because it has the biggest set-pieces but mainly because it builds itself on a solid character and solid story.
I say solid because Rise is not an amazing film but it is an entertaining one and it benefits from having more emotional appeal to it than your Thors, your Captain Americas or your Transformers 3. Rise is the very definition of an origin story as it presents the first ape in the simian spring that will lead to the fall of man. It is pretty well done even if it does have to cover a lot of years (in which our human characters do not appear to have aged even a second of course). It isn't perhaps as smart as I would have liked or as full of commentary as it could have been but it does benefit from a strong heart in Caesar.
While the human characters are mostly surprisingly weak (with the exception of Lithgow), Caesar is a great character and the special effects are well used to translate his feelings and thoughts to the viewer and I found that a lot of my interest in the story was because of my interest in him. How the film manages to do this well but mostly fail at all other characters and thoughtful commentary I'm not sure. We spend so much time with the detail of Caesar's situation that we perhaps lose developmental time for the humans and interactions that could have produced things of interest just don't happen. A key example for me is the final scene between Caesar and Will – there is loads of stuff between these two characters but nothing happens of note, a waste chance for some real meat and it is not the only one. It doesn't help that the human cast don't have a lot to work with. Fraco is a solid presence but too wishy-washy while Pinto may be easy on the eye but is too vague and unnecessary to bother with. Oyelowo is supposed to be a villain of sorts but is just a pragmatic businessman for the majority. None of them really have much to work with.
The final third of the film starts to deliver a pay-off and in particular the effects and drama of the escape are well played out, but as much as I enjoyed this I did wonder why I went away from the film feeling that, while it was OK, it wasn't anything amazing. Part of this is the fact that the story here feels like such a small part of something much bigger and that just as it starts getting somewhere we are suddenly at the end of the film. I mean, this is a film that includes the fall of man at the hands of a virus but yet does it in the end credits (albeit with a well designed and effective visualisation of the spread). It is hard not to feel like we were forced by the telling to focus much tighter than the bigger picture deserved.
Considering the rather serious tone of the film, the occasional throwback or reference to the original films is unwelcome. They are so obvious and in your face that even those who have not seen any Planet of the Apes movies before will recognise the dialogue and what it means is that they just clunk onto the screen bringing no benefit at all. The references aren't funny or clever and all they do is break the scene they occur in, which is a shame.
Overall Rise is one of the best blockbusters of the 2011 season, which is fairly damning when you consider that it is only a solidly good film rather than something memorable. The effects are impressive and they are well used to create a strong central character well played by Serkis, but beyond this the plotting feels too focused and missing a bigger picture while also failing to deliver really interesting commentary and characters. It is a solid summer film, but nothing more than this.