A hot mess

Rating: 5/10 (29 June 2012)

Although the CGI is acceptable and the apes have personality, this reboot lacks charisma, plausibility, and creativity. It combines elements of every medical drama you've ever seen with every animals-in- peril movie you've ever seen. The result is a dishonest, amorphous pile.
The movie is actually a prequel to the Apes movies we all know and love (or not). How did the apes come to rule the planet? Well, here's the thing. You might not get an answer to that from this film at all. I'm sure the creative minds behind it thought that Rise would eventually lead to several more Apes movies, with maybe the next one bridging this one and the Planet of the Apes movie with which we're all familiar. But if one takes this movie at face value, it's a standard-issue, clichéd film and nothing more, no matter what it aspires to lead into.
James Franco plays a scientist searching for a cure for Alzheimer's, with which his dad (John Lithgow) is afflicted. He thinks he's got the right medicine when one - yes, one - chimp shows remarkable cognitive abilities after receiving the drug. This is more than enough for Franco's Will Rodman to show off the primate to investors so that they can provide more money for Phase II, which naturally is when the ape goes, well, ape and destroys the lab.
(Yes, I'm using ape, chimp, primate, and so on interchangeably. It's more fun than writing "chimp," even when it's completely inaccurate.)
I'll say this much for sure - the chimps have great personality, more than any of the humans. Andy Serkis plays the central character, Caesar, and by play I mean move about so that the CGI will match up, which is sort of like acting only not. Caesar, who quickly becomes too smart for his own good (he's the son of the chimp who destroyed the lab), engineers an escape from the two-legged meanies who are holding him, with the help of a giant ape, an orangutan, and other assorted nonhumans.
It's almost a Disney movie. In fact, it's similar to that overlooked Matthew Broderick movie, Project X, in which Broderick tries to save chimps who are undergoing some testing of their own. But beyond the facts that there are apes involved and that we've been informed this is a quasi prequel, the movie has very little in common with the actual Planet of the Apes movies. Because of that, it feels much more like a standard action/drama. With chimps.
The whole thing feels like a setup. Most of the movie deals with Caesar growing up as a ward/son to Rodman, who of course meets cute with a zoo vet (Freida Pinto) and bonds with everyone. The "rise" part of the movie doesn't occur until far into the movie. Luckily, the charm of the fascinating nonhuman characters maintains the interest level a little bit. But only just.
If you make it to the end (no spoiler here), you might be disappointed. The "rise" feels almost tacked on, as if someone suddenly remembered that the primates were supposed to be rebelling against The Man, or something. We never wind up any closer to knowing how the world became the planet of the apes than we were when the movie began, and for that reason it felt like a big waste of time and talent.