Film: Rise & Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Part One

When a Kinglet in Lellow, I watched the original 1968 version of the Planet of the Apes films with Charlton Heston which was ok.

I’ve seen part of the remake by Tim Burton, and then at the weekend, I saw bought the latest remake. As it wasn’t my favourite ever film. So it was a good job it was £5, and was a double pack of both “Rise of the Planet of Apes”, and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”. Yup, £5 for two DVDs – there is an upside to not spending £150 on a TV licence – you can buy a heck of a lot of DVDs. Especially at rock bottom prices from Tescos and Amazon.

So with low expectations, and a high pile of ironing to do I let rip over the weekend.

So Rise of the…. humans doing some dodgy genetic manipulation of chimps, fine so far… but then their key female chimp goes beserk and trashes the place. Hello ? Have you heard of reinforced mesh glass ? Not impressed. And then to top it all, they find that she’d been protecting her infant to whom she’d given birth whilst in captivity in close observation by so called experts. Who then proceed to smuggle the infant out with little thought of quarantine protocols etc.

That is simply unbelievable.

Moving onwards however, the rest of the film is much more believable (as much as any sci-fi movie is), with us tracking Ceasar (the infant chimp’s) progress, and the mental deterioration of the main researcher’s (name omitted its so memorable) father played by John Lithglow. This is done very well, and Ceasar’s attachment to the father, forms a significant plot role. When the father wanders off due to dementia and is attacked by a neighbour Ceasar goes beserk and ends up being sent to a dodgy Zoo for apes where he’s abused, and then inevitably leads a rebellion. Add in some dodgy plot twists and science where Ceasar manages to steal and use the genetic enhancing drugs, and the ape rebellion starts.

There follows some painful to watch scenes where the apes outwit the witless humans by, err, climbing up things ! Apes climbing things ? Who’d have thunk it.

Lost in the background is the rather more important plot, whereby the manipulated drugs start an illness amongst humans, specificly one of the key researchers, who just happens to go off sick and no one thinks to ask why…

As a scene setter, the overall plot is good, but the individual scenes and smaller plot lines are painfully rubbish.
Still for (effectivey) £2.50 its a nice romp.

CGI is flawless and Andy Serkiss’ perfromance also without question great.