Give Enough Chimps Enough Typewriters And They Could Write A Better Screenplay

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2014)

I've no idea how I managed to miss RISE . It came out three years ago and I recall it going on my watch it when it comes out on DVD list but never got round to it for some reason . Now that the sequel DAWN has opened to almost universal praise it's very timely that Channel 4 decided to give it its British TV network broadcast . I saw the trailers on channel 4 last week and made sure I wasn't going to miss it and if I enjoyed this film I might just go out of my way and spend money watching the sequel in the cinema . Hmmmm . After seeing RISE it looks like I've just saved myself the price of a bus ride and a cinema ticket
To be fair the producers deserve some credit on not going for a reworking of the original Pierre Boulle novel . A rocket travels to another planet where Apes at the top of the evolutionary ladder and there's a shock twist at the end . It's been done before and very well in the 1968 film and abysmally in the Tim Burton version so congratulations for trying a different spin this time with a reworking of CONQUEST
The unfortunate thing is the storyline is very predictable and lacking in any imagination . Okay in CONQUEST apes are used as slaves and it's up to Ceaser a self aware chimpanzee from the future who is a fugitive leading a revolution by apes to overthrow their cruel masters . There's not a lot of realism to that plot but the great strength of the original franchise was that it was made with so much imagination plausibility didn't matter " The good bomb made us all " indeed and for that we should be grateful . Here however everything is so recognisable that it ends up becoming , insipid , vapid and very mundane
This most especially extends to the humans who are one note clichés . Good scientists , trying to benefit mankind , sick relative , sadistic guard type character and worst of all rabidly greedy corporate company boss . It says something that the best performance comes from Andy Serkis and he plays the film in a CGI suit swinging through trees and rattling bars but to be fair again Daniel Day Lewis would be incapable of bringing much to the roles of humans in this screenplay
There's a saying that " If you give enough chimpanzees enough typewriters they will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare " Apparently this is an untrue truism and according to the likes of Richard Dawkins and other scientists involved in biology there's neither enough chimpanzees or typewriters for this to remotely come close to happening . That said if you give a typewriter to someone like Paul Dehn and sit him in a committee of Hollywood film producers he can string out a highly entertaining and imaginative series of movies based upon a film adaptation of Pierre Boulle;s original novel. There's nothing like that here and you feel you're watching something not all that far removed from the Syfy channel