It Fits Well Into The Series But Perhaps Pays Too Much Homage To Its Predecessors

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2011)

There have been a number of possible explanations offered by Hollywood over the years to explain exactly how it is that apes took over the earth. It's been a very long time since I read the book, so I don't remember if Pierre Bouille's original novel engaged in the speculation, but in the 1968 original movie it was an evolutionary process after a nuclear war devastated human society; in the 4th instalment ("Conquest ...") it was an ape rebellion against what had become effective slavery; my memory of the 2001 movie (which I enjoyed by the way) is that the explanation was rather convoluted. This is another attempt - whose purpose is clearly identified by the title.
This is at times a very exciting movie. The opening scenes, as a group of chimpanzees are chased through their jungle home and captured is both exciting and rather sad, and the ape rebellion at the end of the movie (which takes up most of the last half hour) is quite well portrayed. In between, the movie is almost always interesting and offers some worthwhile explorations of a variety of topics: animal rights, the place of animal research, the dangers of human beings going where perhaps we shouldn't go. All those issues are present and you certainly find yourself thinking about them as the movie progresses. The clearest comparison within the entire "Apes" franchise would probably be to the movie "Conquest ..." What I appreciated about this was that the ultimate success of the rebellion was not as clear. It seemed too easy in "Conquest;" here, the apes manage to escape from the facility they were being held in, they wreak havoc throughout San Francisco, and they escape to the redwood forest. It's left as an open question (for a sequel?) as to how this particular revolution is going to spread, although one possible explanation is a virus that kills humans but makes apes more intelligent. That virus was the engine that moved most of the story forward. It was a drug invented as a possible cure for Alzheimer's Disease, with apes being used as subjects for experiments.
I had a mixed reaction to the cast. James Franco was all right as Will, the scientist chiefly responsible for the Alzheimer's drug, but who also has something of a soft spot for the apes. This certainly, however, didn't match his performance in "127 Hours." John Lithgow was solid in a somewhat limited role as his father, who's suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, which explains Will's motivation. Somewhat mystifying to me was Freida Pinto's turn as Caroline Aranha, a veterinarian who develops a romantic relationship with Will. That relationship wasn't (thankfully) front and centre, but without the relationship being front and centre (which would have taken the movie in a direction it didn't need to go) Pinto's role seemed totally unnecessary.
Unlike other instalments in the "Apes" series of movies, the apes themselves are CGI-created. Perhaps in some ways they look more ape-like than humans in ape costumes, but to be honest at times (particularly as they swing through trees, etc.) they really didn't look real. I wasn't especially taken with the decision to go CGI on the apes. Although the use of actors might have been superfluous since the apes don't really speak, it might have made the viewer even more sympathetic to the apes than I was by giving me a real personality to connect with. While I recognize that this is part of a huge franchise dating back over 40 years, at times it seemed to be trying too hard to establish its place in the "canon," so to speak, by making totally unnecessary references to earlier movies. The chase of the chimps through the jungle and their capture was somewhat reminiscent of the capture of Taylor and the other humans in the '68 movie, the original chimp taken from the wild is given the name "Bright Eyes" (like the human Taylor in '68), her son gets named Caesar (from "Conquest.") Also in clear references to '68 we have water hoses being used against the intelligent caged ape, and, of course, the famous line gets spoken again: "get your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!" Even the font used for the title was identical to the font used in the original series of movies! Maybe that was all too much. Were all those connections really necessary? I don't think so.
I wouldn't deny, though, that it's a pretty exciting movie and it's not a bad fit into the overall series. (7/10)