Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

This year is the year that those clever people over in movieland finally decided to exorcise the memory of that abomination that was Tim Burton's reboot of the classic Planet of the Apes, and good lord they've struck gold.

Yep, this week I went off to see Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, Rupert Wyatt's attempt to eradicate scenes like THIS from history...We can forgive, Tim, but we'll never forget.

In all honesty, I can't ever really remember being that in to any of the original franchise, other than the original, and after Burton went all hill-billy-cop-in-the-basement-from-Pulp-Fiction with the attempted rebooting, I never really had much urge to look back over them. What's more, I was mainly swayed by one of my mates being extremely amused by Draco Malfoy saying "stupid monkey" in the trailer. It turned out to be a pretty damn good decision, this is how you reboot a series, please take note, anyone involved with Superman Returns, Rob Zombie's take on Halloween and The Pink Panther Steve Martin atrocities.

This film some how manages to allow you to get past the admittedly amusing vision of monkeys taking over San Francisco, and forces you to genuinely empathise with the ape characters as if they were members of Tom Hanks' boys in Saving Private Ryan. Seriously. It's a bit weird.

Looking at the cast, James Franco puts on a nice and honest portrayal of a man simply in too deep with professional and family crises, solid but unspectacular, allowing us all to focus on the key action - the apes themselves. Unsurprisingly, like all of the cleverest movie bigwigs, when ROTPOTA (which for some reason amuses me) needed a genius of the motion capture world, they hired Andy Serkis to play Caesar, the first ape to successfully respond to Franco's viral cure to Alzheimer's, and whose intelligence increases rapidly as a result. I really don't know what else I have to say about Serkis, I'm pretty sure I've never seen him letting himself down in any film, in any guise...though I haven't see Burke And Hare, mind you. I actually forgot the chimp was an actor in a mocap suit for a good period of the opening hour of the film, it's pretty impressive.

The nearly show stealing performance, however, belongs to John Lithgow, yep, him off of 3rd Rock From The Sun, playing Franco's father, who is deteriorating through Alzheimer's. For a man we pretty much only associate as being a bit of the comic fool, if not being a pain in Sly Stallone's mountain climbing backside, Lithgow puts on a display of a man declining mentally that really is stunning. His character is basically the catalyst that brings on the change in the world of the apes, and it's only right that Lithgow, a man we're used to seeing playing the lovable idiot, falling to pieces, which just makes his situation that much more soul destroying.

Oh...and Tom Felton is in it too, probably proving that he's odds on to actually have the best career after the world of Harry Potter. He's actually pretty good, even if he is proving that America still loves casting us British folk as the bad guys - the other 'villain' character, Franco's boss, is also played by a Brit, David Oyelowo - but I suppose we can forgive it...because let's face it, we are fairly convincing dastards.

The plot is a strong one, as said before, it's surprisingly convincing...you don't feel too daft following and loving it. The CGI is pretty great too, there's only one or two of the apes that you can honestly tell are computerised, even though we all know they're all fake anyhow. And, best of all, the film sets itself nicely up for a sequel or two, even throwing in a lovely little treat for us sci-fi nerds out there in the form of mentioning the first manned mission to Mars, which will link nicely into one of the astronauts coming back to a world ransacked by the apes.

All in all, this will take some serious beating by the other sci-fi films coming out this year, though I have really high hopes for Super 8 and Cowboys And Aliens, no word of a lie, this film is pretty top notch.

5/5 - I don't really like giving things top marks, particularly when dealing with the stigma of a sci-fi movie, but I honestly can't think of anything wrong with this one. Acting was great all round, plot was great and effects were brilliant. So yeah...full marks indeed. Go see it!

P.S. This one has a minor role for Brian Cox, who is also awesome. Hoorah.