"Apes Stupid." No, Maurice. Humans Stupid. That's why Apes "Rise".

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2011)

At heart, every permutation of the "Planet of the Apes" franchise has been a searing denouncement of humanity and its numerous vices, especially basic stupidity. However, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (hereafter "Rise")catapults human idiocy to near-stratospheric levels. Roger Ebert writes in his "Rise" review, "..the movie has its pleasures, although human intelligence is not one of them." The simian ascension will be a cakewalk. Consider the examples of human stupidity throughout the movie:
1. Gen-Sys, the corporation for which the human protagonist Will Rodman (James Franco) works as a pharmaceutical scientist, boasts appalling security and ethical lapses. Of course, the first transgression involves Caesar's chimpanzee mother, Bright Eyes, who has received an infusion of the mind-enhancing drug, AZ-112.
Not only does Gen-Sys lack the facilities to avert her subsequent rampage of destruction, it isn't even aware that she gave birth to Caesar and that her maternal protective instincts triggered her rage.
2. Will's well-intentioned but ill-advised benevolence compels him to save the infant Caesar from his mother's fate. He decides to raise Caesar at home like a human child. Bad move. Introducing a potentially wild and destructive beast into a suburban neighborhood, including a chimpanzee, even a gifted one like Caesar is asking for trouble. Remember the story of the woman whose face was mutilated by a neighbor's "pet" chimpanzee and who required years of reconstructive surgery? Inevitably, Caesar intervenes between Will's Alzheimers-afflicted father Charles Rodman (John Lithgow) and an irate neighbor to protect the former, injures the latter, and is condemned to live at a brutal ape sanctuary in San Francisco.
3. Will's love interest, primatologist Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto) could have provided valuable insights into chimpanzee behavior, intellect, and motivations, and perhaps could have helped avert the climactic "ape escape". But instead of acting like Jane Goodall, Caroline merely makes vague pronouncements about how dangerous "cute" chimps really are and how we really shouldn't mess with them, and with genetic science in general. She turns out to be distracting eye candy.
4. Again, good-intentioned but ethically-challenged Will absconds with some of the AZ-112 formula from his security- challenged company to inject into his father to re-enhance his cognitive abilities. It works, but only temporarily.
5. Meanwhile, the imprisoned Caesar has to endure yet another shabbily maintained and guarded facility, an ape enclosure managed by two louts, the clueless proprietor John Landon (Brian Cox) and his son, abusive animal wrangler Dodge Landon (Tom Felton), plus a third individual.
6. Why are there seemingly only three people managing a vast wildlife preserve containing (improbably) hundreds of chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas? Even without his AZ-enhanced genius, Caesar, I think, would not have had too much difficulty escaping from that minimum-security dump?
7. Will manages to synthesize a more permanent, powerful version of AZ-112 (AZ-113, naturally) and attempts to test it on another chimpanzee. Lax security strikes again, the ape writhes on the table, a side-effect virus spreads to one of the handlers present (who has lost his sterilizing mask), and the guy later goes out into public without any decontamination procedures to bleed, sneeze, and spread the virus. Just great.
8. Clever Caesar escapes, finds his way back to Will's house, obtains some AZ-113, which Will has again appropriated from his sieve of a company, and uses it to "brain-boost" his fellow simian inmates, and engineers a jail break.
9. Foolishly, the vicious, taser-wielding Dodge allows Caesar to electrocute him with water from a hose.
10. Roughly two hundred escaped apes, led by Caesar, romp through San Francisco towards escape over the Golden Gate Bridge. A few cops on horseback with machine guns (and horrible aim) and a couple of helicopters is the best defense the city can muster? Where's the freaking National Guard? No wonder the apes have a relatively easy time making it to the Muir redwoods sanctuary.
11. In the movie postscript, the AZ-113 virus (which humans are susceptible to but to which apes are immune) is spread by an airline pilot and becomes an epidemic.
12. Thanks, Will. Your good intentions have paved a road to a hell of tort and criminal liability, not to mention the probable extinction of the human race and the subsequent ape ascendancy. At least the dinosaurs had the (arguable) excuse of an asteroid for their superseding by the mammals. And dinosaurs are supposed to be dumb?
And yet, despite this relentless parade of dumbness, I really did enjoy the movie. The simian protagonist Caesar (motion-capture animated by Andy Serkis) is mainly responsible. His resourceful intellect, his "Frankenstein monster" plight, his sufferings, his clemency and his organization of an eventual worldwide revolution is well-paced and gripping. The movie's creators want you to be in his corner and you are. If that involves stacking the deck against humans, well so be it. Humans have had their day. Let the apes have a crack at it. In the next sequels, let's see how they do.
P.S. During the movie, an expedition to Mars is lost in space. It is called Icarus. How apt. In mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun on wax wings, had them melt, and fell to earth. If and when the Icarus crew falls back to earth, what bizarre reception can they expect?