9
by TC
watched this last night. spoilers within this post, if you care. not blacking them out as i don't think anyone does....
this is really two movies in one. the first half of the movie is actually pretty good. we see a scientist that is trying to cure alzheimer's as his dad that lives with him is slowly going down that road. he has a drug that has shown great potential in chimps and he wants to begin human trials. the drug is ALZ-112. don't know what happened with the first 111, but yeah... anyway, during the initial demo to potential investors (or the board of the company, not really sure) there is an incident that causes the guy running the show to demand all chimps be put down. well, there was a baby so he took it home. the baby was an offspring of one of the chimps that was showing great results with the drug. he discovers that the drug is passed on genetically and this chimp is super smart. he decides to give his dad the drug. immediately he becomes his old self, or better. this lasts five years, at which point his body becomes immune to the drug - the antibodies can inhibit the drug. the chimp has his own room in the attic and helps the scientist's dad with things. one day the dad gets confused and goes out to get in his neighbor's car. he accidentally starts it and bashes into neighboring cars. the guy comes out and freaks out on the old man, dragging him out of the car and stabbing his finger into the old man's chest. the chimp sees this and gets protective, runs outside and attacks the guy, chases him, and bites the finger off. the police get involved, animal control takes the chimp to a "sanctuary". scientist is bummed. dad gets sick and dies. now he's lost everything. he wants to come up with a more aggressive strain of the drug that can overcome natural antibodies....
then the second half of the movie takes over. it had been building up slowly and deliberately, going smoothly from 0 to 60. suddenly, it goes from 60-200 immediately. things get apeshit crazy (pun intended) almost immediately. all the science and relationships go out the window. the rest of the film is about the chimp figuring out how to make the rest of the primates as smart as him and how to free them. i should say at this point that everything has been pretty believable. i mean, if you accept that it's possible that a drug could increase intelligence in a chimp, then it's all easy to buy. i can see how it would be very easy to get attached to a chimp that was brilliant. but this fork in the film takes things over the top. a chimp doing logic puzzles, art, and signing is one thing, but a chimp that has built-in geolocation capabilities is insane. in literally one cut, the chimp opens his cage then is suddenly at the scientist's house standing over the bed. wtf? the film takes place in san francisco and the sanctuary is clearly pretty far from where this guy lives. the chimp travels there and back, unseen, with no problem? he then also later goes from the sanctuary to the lab to steal more of the drug, then from the lab to the redwood forest? he knows how to get around? what the fuck, the chimp learn how to use a tom tom? then later, the chimp finds his voice and yells "no" in a moment of anger. that's actually kind of believable, as the way he says it is kind of a "sound" not really enunciating it. however, a short time later he's putting together a complete sentence without difficulty. i don't know, it just got really silly.
all of that being said.... the effects were undeniably really good. lithgow was endearing as the old man with alzheimer's. brian cox (capt. o'hagan) was great as the shady/shitty sanctuary runner. felton was cast as malfoy teasing apes instead of hogwart's freshmen. it was gratifying to see him killed, finally. serkis clearly did some great work. and really, it did a great job as a setup to the series - the apes end up in the forest, and it has already been established that intelligence is passed down genetically, so all the offspring would be smart apes, etc., so as time goes on there would be more and more of them... assuming that this mass of apes somehow stays undetected and avoids the obviously impending attack of the US armed forces in response to them killing multiple SFPD, etc... so yeah, kind of silly. also, franco in a "serious" role is a mistake. let him continue to make stoner comedies where he can eck out a living for the rest of his life. he's not a leading man.
it started out with the potential to be a really smart movie. the second half was something else. but i guess it did have to somehow end up in the campy world of the originally series... they should have just let it be its own film. i suppose the good news is that as a prequel it essentially is a stand-alone film - what comes after already exists. no sequel.
