RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES--MY REVIEW

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is the story of the beginning of the fall of mankind and the rise to power of our simian brethren. Watching the film the main thing I kept thinking was “this should be better”. Not just better, but more exciting, less choppy and a lot more visceral. Rise isn’t a bad film but that’s mainly because it isn’t a complete film, it’s more like two movies that got slammed together and neither have an ending. The entire thing is a jumbled mess of pieces parts necessary to kick-start the franchise but nothing is handled correctly and it causes the film to collapse under its own weight.

The story here is simple. Caesar, a chimp who grows to extraordinary intellect through an experimental drug is eventually driven to lead a revolt against his human captors. If the filmmakers had stuck with that premise and created a fast paced film that got our blood pumping then Rise would have been one of the best summer films out there. Instead, the folks behind the movie got way too bogged down in back-story that served no purpose and tried too hard to reinvent the original B-Film as a serious movie.

First and foremost is the James Franco character, a doctor obsessed with finding the cure for Alzheimer’s disease because of his once brilliant father now succumbing to it. Really? The filmmakers were in such a rush to make Franco’s character likable they had to give us the most cliché reason ever?

The father plot point also wastes the talents of John Lithgow, who spends half the time overacting his Alzheimer and the other half overacting his normal state. Franco’s slow drawl and monotone acting style take an already underwritten character and make him painful to watch. Nothing that the humans do here really has any impact on the story and they are grossly underwritten, or written badly across the board. As far as the film goes to show what their characters are, they never actually achieve it.

For instance, Franco is supposed to be the scientist with a soul, but his character never really shows us anything outside of soulful looks. The completely wasted Brian Cox piddles around without ever establishing who his character is or why he’s in the movie outside of being the guy who owns the monkey habitat that Caesar is taken to after he attacks a neighbor (more on that later).

Even the two bad guys never really do anything to make themselves truly evil. First is Tom Felton as one of the sons of Brian Cox’s monkey habitat owner. Felton’s character is supposed to be the ignorant redneck guy who picks on the monkeys and gets off on trying to dominate them. The film never bothers to explain why he hates monkeys as much as does and with the kind of hatred he has, it isn’t just annoyance at the job. There feels like something deeper is going on but the filmmakers decided not to try and deal with that. Felton’s character does stupid things but nothing really terrible, he’s an idiot but never really mean. His character has no weight so when he gets his comeuppance, you don’t care.

David Oyelowo, who plays the head of the typical “global evil company” funding Franco’s research, struts around in expensive suits and says mean things, but he comes across more as foolish than sinister. At one point, after several setbacks testing the drug, Oyelowo sees another monkey writing his name and suddenly approves it for mass production. Really? What drug would ever go straight to market because a monkey wrote his name? The lack of real evil to what he does makes his comeuppance seem overly cruel. So with no hero to root for and no villain to hate, everything comes to down to the monkeys, and they really don’t deliver.

The main problem is that reproducing a living being or animal without a lot of cash is a hard sell. When you’re Peter Jackson, fresh off the Lord Of The Rings, and the studio is throwing money at you; you can make a monkey always look real. When you’re Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a tenuous-at-best attempt to kick start a franchise that hasn’t been relevant since the sixties, one that has the anchor of the Marky Mark version locked around it’s neck, the studio isn’t quite so forthcoming with the bucks.

Because of that the digital effects of Caesar never actually look 100% real. You never lose the idea that you’re staring at essentially a cartoon and it kept taking me out of the moment. In some parts the effects are so cartoony it felt more like Rise Of Grape Ape or Magilla Gorilla Goes Nutzoid.

Granted Caesar doesn’t really act like a chimp, he does things only men would do and I understand it’s hard for the brain to rationalize that. Still, Caesar tends to always look like a video game character. As well, the filmmakers went way too far trying to make him a sympathetic character. Making us care about a sweet monkey being abused isn’t hard, so all the endless shots of him looking forlorn or thinking or reacting in a “human” way begins to read more like movie filler than anything else. The only truly effective work is the final attack at the end of the film. Problem is, it’s the last twenty minutes of the movie. The rest of the film is so disjointed that you can’t get too excited by the final battle.

I lay most of the blame for this at the feet of director Rupert Wyatt and writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It apparently took two people to write this movie and at no point did either of them look at the script and say, “Hmmm, there’s a lot of dues ex machina here”. For example, Rise opens with the first test of the super drug Franco’s character is creating. It’s just about to be approved when their star chimp goes crazy, escapes and has to be shot. That outbreak looks like a result of the drug so they deny Franco approval. Then suddenly it turns out that the chimp was protecting a young baby that nobody knew she had. Um, okay?

First off, once that was discovered the project would have been back on line since it wasn’t the drugs fault. It’s not though; it’s just shut down. Secondly, NOBODY noticed a chimp had a baby? I’m no vet but I have to imagine with a star chimp in a lab somebody would have heard it giving birth and, correct me if I’m a wrong, baby chimps don’t appear like magic. There’s afterbirth, blood, etc.

So why do it? The first is so that Franco’s doctor can become so desperate he’s pushed into doing something desperate like using the drug on his father. The second was to figure out someway to introduce Caesar. That open section dictates the entire script. It’s chock full of things that just “happen” so the plot can be moved along. They needed a voice of conscious, somebody who warns Franco’s character of the dangers of what he’s doing. Cue the girlfriend, who appears, suddenly, falls in love with Franco though there is zero chemistry and no story and then leaves.

In another scene they need something that makes Caesar look mean, though he really isn’t, and allows him to be captured and put with other monkeys. Enter the awful neighbor who hates Franco for no reason and acts like a cunt just because it makes him easier to hate. Apparently, even though he lives next door to Franco and his father, the shitty neighbor has no idea that the father has Alzheimer’s disease, which allows him to overreact to a car accident and, when the protective Caesar sees the attack, he can flip out.

The most egregious of these scenes is the way the writers begin the end of mankind. I won’t spoil it, but from the start of that subplot to the end, none of it makes any logical sense. It’s all just things that happen to get to the end goal of setting up the fall of man. That particular string of circumstances is almost insulting. Rise is riddled with these types of situations and it eliminates any real story that could have been told.

For Rupert Wyatt’s end, the man did not pace Rise very well at all. The beginning is entirely too rushed, as is the end, while the middle drags on and on. Outside of the monkey revolution, the third act is the most riddled with problems. It feels as if Wyatt realized he hadn’t really set things up for the next movie so he started throwing random things in that had nothing to do with anything. They’re so badly shoe horned in that you instantly say “Next movie set up” and it takes you out of the current movie. From the get go sections that should have been allowed to slowly grow are rushed and scenes that don’t matter are either added in or dragged out.

Rise also hurts itself by giving us two hamfisted nods to the original Planet Of The Apes movie. When the nods happen they don’t work and seem weirdly melodramatic and dated as if the person involved would never have said those things. I’m all for nods to the original but do them well. These are so goofy I kept expecting for one monkey to walk up to Caesar with two pizzas and utter “Pizza Pizza.” Rise isn’t supposed to be a comedy but the two nods result in laughs during scenes where laughs shouldn’t be.

By the end of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes your mind is scrambling to bring order to the jumbled mess you’ve been shown. I didn’t care about characters I thought I should, I was stumbling over huge plot problems, and I was pissed that there wasn’t more monkey war action. This isn’t Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes; this is how the apes moved to the country. I wanted and expected so much more from this movie. I can’t even recommend this as a popcorn flick because it’s too heavy handed, yet it fails to have enough dramatic resonance to be a drama and it’s not sci-fi enough to be a good sci-fi movie. It’s more an amalgam of elements that never quite gel together. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is a rocky start to re-launching a beloved franchise.

Captain America--My Review

Captain America is the best superhero movie since The Dark Knight.

Now before people start screaming for my head or ordering a straight jacket, let me explain what I mean. Watching Captain America something clicked for me, something that finally made me understand the ups and downs of this genre. You can only tell a comic book tale in two ways, either completely realistically or as a complete fantasy. The Dark Knight was the first, Captain America the latter. So while Dark Knight is a superior film, Captain America is just as good of a comic book film. Captain America works because it realizes it’s a comic book and never strays from that idea.

I’m actually interested in how Captain America will blend with the more action heavy and “realistic” heroes in The Avengers. Iron Man, it’s sequel, the Hulk and Thor all tried to straddle both the realism and fantasy lines and that’s where they failed. When a comic book movie doesn’t choose a type, it never settles on what it wants to be and usually becomes a mess. Iron Man started as a comedy, then tried to become an action film, it never really became a comic book movie so it felt, for lack of a better term, off. The sequel decided to be a straight action film but what was happening was too out of the range of those films so nothing quite gelled. It also suffered from being crammed with too much and losing focus.

The Hulk did a great job of grounding itself in reality but that just doesn’t work with the subject matter. It should have been a total comic book fantasy, without all this pretentious human drama that seemed out of place. Thor has done the best so far but got anchored by a love story that had no place and didn’t work. The fantastic and comic book elements of Thor were great, the attempt to also include the realistic aspects fell flat. Green Lantern, well, that’s just what happens when people shit on the source material.

But I digress. Back to the review.

First off, I owe Chris Evans a huge apology. He nails the character of Steve Rogers across the board. There is no trace of the sarcastic frat boy jerk that played the Human Torch. It’s clear Evans understands the core of who Steve Rogers is, that it isn’t about the power but rather that Steve Rogers represents the best in all of us. Evans not only plays that idea perfectly, he manages to do it during the awkward scenes where it’s only his face digitally placed upon the body of a short and very skinny stand in. For those afraid the digital Chris Evans on the stand in would look silly, it’s about a 90/10 split. Most of the time its fine, but when it looks off it looks disturbingly like Steve Rogers has a broken neck..

Stanley Tucci is wonderful as Abraham Erksine, the peaceful German scientist whose super solider serum was, against his will, originally used by Nazi scientist Johann Schmidt. Schmidt’s reaction to the serum turns him into the Red Skull, a super human enemy that Erksine feels responsible for creating. Without ever saying it, Tucci lets us know that his faith in Steve Rogers comes from how well he knows true evil that he can know just as well true good. It makes Steve Rogers commitment to always doing the right thing that much more believable. When Evans becomes Captain America he remains the good man he was before the serum, one who is ill at ease with his new powers. His journey from that man to the hero he will become is not only charming and funny, but also allows a nod to the cover of Captain America #1.

Some were nervous that Rockateer director Joe Johnston wouldn’t be able to pull off Captain America. I’ll admit, I was nervous to, but Johnston has made a beautiful ode to not only the hero but also Golden Age comics. Johnston understands that he’s doing the fantasy comic book movie and he never loses that tone. The film is shot like an old 40s war film combined with a fantasy comic book element. The previews for Captain America have drawn some fire for the action sequences. When Cap jumps or hits a bad guy it looks over-the-top, as if all done with wires. Within the context of the film it works perfectly and allows us all to know we’re watching a comic book come to life.

One of the best decisions Johnston makes is to play down the love interest. There is romance here but it’s kept to the side, making the end that much more tragic. Actress Hayley Atwell (as Peggy Carter) and Chris Evans do a great job of keeping their feelings just under the surface. Coupled with some nice touches from Joe Johnston, the relationship feels real but never gets in the way of the story. I was particularly pleased that Johnston and the screenwriters chose to have Peggy Carter really begin to feel something for Steve Rogers when he was still small and puny. It added a depth to her character that all the exposition in the world couldn’t have mustered.

The real secret weapon in Captain America is Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull. Trying to create a scary villain that feels like a real threat is difficult in a film with such an old school vibe. We live in an era of Saw and Silence Of The Lambs, so something like the Red Skull is hard pressed to be truly scary. Weaving accomplishes this by letting it all hang out in his performance. His Red Skull is so off balance and insane with power that you’re never sure what his next move is. Weaving is so good here that he makes the Red Skull a formidable villain without any real violence. Sure he’s going to destroy the world, but he’s using the power of the Cosmic Cube, which is scary but only in a very comic book way. It’s the complete dedication to the story that makes Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull so wonderful.

The rest of the cast is also first rate. Tommy Lee Jones is perfect as Colonel Chester Philips, the military leader that directs Captain America. Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark is something people should really pay attention to. Cooper does some small things that mimic Robert Downey JR’s Tony Stark. You can see the father and son trait between them. Toby Jones holds his own against Hugo Weaving as Dr. Arnim Zola, The Skulls’ head scientist and even manages to steal some scenes.

Aside from the cast, the real power to how good Captain America is comes from the respect the filmmakers have for the source material. Everything you need to make a successful comic book film is within the pages of the comics themselves. When you stray from that, the movie is always off; it always fails to capture what makes these characters last for generations. Don’t get me wrong, there are changes to the original story in Captain America, but none of them disrespect the source material. Much as having The Joker in Dark Knight wear make-up instead of being burned to look like a clown, Joe Johnston makes several little tweaks so that the story is more palatable to a mass audience and the story flows easier. None of what he does feels like it couldn’t have actually been in the comic originally. Johnston with his direction and Evans with his acting maintain the source material’s integrity and that is what has Captain America standing head and shoulders above the competition.

For comic book geeks like myself, there are lots of little bonuses. For instance we get Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Jim Morita. If you’re paying attention there is a funny nod to Evans’ turn as the Human Torch and the big Iron Man 2 Starkfest scene when Tony flies down to the dancing girls. I was impressed with how the story stayed true to the forties era war film vibe, but never lost sight of being part of a bigger picture. When Captain America wakes up in the modern age, it fits right in with the rest of the films. I was concerned when Evans’ Cap met Samuel Jackson’s Nick Fury it wouldn’t gel, but it does. Part of that is how Captain America opens; it’s a smart move that sets the tone for the end as well.

Everything isn’t perfect with Captain America, there is one glaring issue that will have purists bitching and moaning. Bucky Barnes. The story of Caps’ right hand man is completely different than the comic. To start, Bucky is a friend of Steve Rogers pre-Captain America, one who often comes to the rescue of Rogers when he’s getting beaten up.

SPOILER ALERT!!

Probably the biggest problem with the whole Bucky subplot is how he dies. It just sort of happens, and a little too quickly. Anybody expecting to see Bucky in a mask fighting by Caps’ side will be sorely disappointed, especially with the death. I will say that where the death happens could, in a comic book way, give rise to the Winter Soldier, but that’s a really outside chance. The Bucky problem isn’t huge, but the fact that the rest of the movie is so good makes it stick out like a sore thumb. The post credits Avengers trailer does a lot with a little. It generates some real excitement for the movie without showing much at all.

Captain America is one of the best surprises of the entire lot of superhero movies. I went into this film expecting to feel the same blind hatred I did when I left Green Lantern. Instead I found a movie that had me cheering, rooting for the hero and feeling like I was thirteen years old again. As the comic movie genre goes forward, I think directors and writers will look to the Dark Knight and Captain America to figure out which style of movie they want to make and how to make it. Both are prime examples of how comic book movies should always be handled.