Rise of the Planet of the Apes (***1/4)

Until close to the end of this movie, you might be wondering what a small sci-fi film about a scientist (James Franco) and his genetically modified chimp Caesar (Andy Serkis) has to do with the old film series in which an entire world of intelligent chimps rule over humans. But you’ll keep watching anyway.

Like so many films about scientists, this may be deplored by real one because even the relatively kind protagonist played by Franco comes off as a reckless fool. (His boss is also money-grubbing.) (Unlike Contagion, it also sticks with the usual depiction of scientists as lone geniuses rather than collaborators.) It’s also, essentially, the usual Garden of Eden-inspired morality play about scientists meddling in arenas where they don’t belong. And it’s an allegory about human cruelty that’s only slightly less heavy-handed than, say, Avatar, another film in which the humans are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, the villains. (This criticism is purely a dramatic one; the recent documentary Project Nim shows, in fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking fashion, that, for chimps in capitivity, humans really are, allowing a few grudging exceptions, villains.)

But the saving graces are two. First, it doesn’t confer upon apes some kind of spiritual purity. Instead, the film gives us, in Caesar, chimpanzee as warm and cuddly friend (like Spielberg’s E.T.), then (as Spielberg does with his robot in A.I.) yanks the curtain away from that sentimental view, then kind of balances it out, granting the non-human primates their, for lack of a better word, humanity. Second, unlike the the original Planet of the Apes (1968), or the misbegotten film of the same name from 2001, this is more in the vein of a modest thriller than some sort of epic. Somehow, when I don’t feel like the filmmaker is trying to make a grand statement, I am less inclined to quibble that a non-genentically modified orangutan is supposed to be able to have a complex discussion with Caesar simply because he too was once taught sign language. Or that the scientist’s apparently bright girlfriend can’t figure out in five years that Caesar might not be an ordinary ape.

This Rise, then, is a probably fantastic, but still entertaining extrapolation of the idea of what might happen if these creatures who are so similar to us, yet so much more powerful, got smarter. With the help of Serkis (repeating his motion-captured acting from Lord of the Rings), director Rupert Wyatt creates some arresting visuals to accompany the action-oriented second half of the film. The script from the team of Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (An Eye for an Eye, The Relic) apes (pun intended) E.T. and probably any number of other films, but the originality of having a non-human central character mostly compensates.

IMDB link

viewed 9/15/11 at UA Riverview and reviewed 9/16/11

Star Trek (***)

They used to just have sequels, and then they had prequels, and now they have “reboots,” attempts to financially, and maybe artistically, resuscitate a movie series that had seemed to play itself out. New actors are cast, a new writer and director are hired, and the story returns to its origins. In this case, it returns to an even earlier period, though that happens to be over 200 years in the future. Beginning with the birth of future starship captain James T. Kirk, it ends more or less at the starting point of the original 1967–1969 series. The director is J. J. Abrams, creator of TV’s Alias and Lost.

I tend to like origin stories, but to be honest the childhood stuff is pretty perfunctory. Kirk (Chris Pine) reveals his brash nature and impulsivity via that hoariest of clichés, a bar fight. (He’s trying to pick up his future shipmate Uhura, who gets to be a love interest in this version.) Meanwhile, on planet Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto) gets teased for being half-human, behavior that seems odd, and not at all alien, for such a logical race. But the series, and this movie, always seemed to have as a core theme that trying to be logical makes no sense. Hence, Spock is always the secondary hero to Kirk, who believes every battle can be won and reflects creator Gene Roddenberry‘s optimistic view of humanity.

Genocide and revenge are themes here too, but it’s not the humans but the alien Romulans who threaten both. This plot, too, is unremarkable, but provides the framework for the main characters to reveal their personalities, and for the special-effects crew to show up those 1960s TV folks and most of the earlier films based on their exploits. You don’t need to know anything about any of that to follow the film, but it probably makes it more enjoyable. Even if the story is new, it’s careful about hitting as many of the familiar touchstones as possible, from Spock’s “Live Long and Prosper” to “Bones” McCoy’s “I’m just a doctor!” schtick to the “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise” voiceover, moved from the intro to the coda. The actors, too, definitely aim to preserve some of the mannerisms of the old cast. Pine’s Kirk, especially, has more than a hint of Shatner in his movements, though there’s less of his oft-parodied halting vocal style.

With Shatner represented in spirit, Leonard Nimoy shows up in the flesh, shoehorned into a couple of scenes via a time-travel plot that Spock himself might call “highly illogical.” Again, plot is not the strong point, but with that exception the script Transformers writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have crafted is a sturdy vehicle for the action scenes (I liked the one with a wild animal) and the rivalry-cum-friendship of Kirk and Spock. Reboot successful, more or less.

IMDB link

viewed 5/26/09 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/26 and 5/29/09