Director: Rupert Wyatt
Writers: Rick Jaffa,
Amanda Silver,
and 1 more credit
Stars: James Franco, Andy Serkis and Freida Pinto
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See full cast and crew
A substance, designed to help the brain repair itself, gives rise to a super-intelligent chimp who leads an ape uprising.
When a scientist (James Franco) investigating a cure for
Alzheimer's is ordered to shut down his lab after the chimpanzee test
subjects go berserk and are terminated, he manages to save one adorable
little chimp (Andy Serkis via state-of-the-art Weta FX). Unfortunately
the lil fella develops into a Spartacus sort with ambitions to free his
people from the tyranny of man, setting in motion events that apparently
will eventually lead to the Planet we saw in the original Charlton
Heston movie, which was made in 1968, but set many years in the future
after the events depicted in this 2011 sequel... remake... prequel...
reboot... thing. Confused? Ok, it's a movie about a smart ape.
Everyone's favourite laconic Oscar host James Franco here
rises to the challenge of acting against a mo-capped Andy Serkis with
remarkable success. You'll soon forget that when he's staring
encouragingly into the face of Caesar the chimpanzee, hugging Caesar or
leading Caesar around on a leash, he was actually doing all these things
to a man wearing a grey skintight leotard covered with electrical
blobby doohickeys. That's the magic of cinema for you.
Of course, Serkis, who played King Kong himself in Peter
Jackson's 2005 version of the great ape epic, isn't new to the whole
mo-cap monkey business. Or as purists would have it, performance-capture
primates. Serkis is at the forefront of a new wave of actors advocating
'performance capture' as the preferred term for a job every bit as
demanding and skilled as acting of the traditional variety. And his
performance really is the reason to see the film. Caesar is the lead,
Caesar has the most sympathetic story arc, and it's Caesar who we want
to see more from, because really, this is an origin story, with precious
little plot and oodles of character development. The final-act action
is well-directed and staged, but this careful, thoughtful film feels
like a taster reel for things to come.
Verdict
He came, he saw, he conquered: Caesar is a wholly convincing lead, he just needs a more satisfying story. Roll on the sequel.
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