"The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is the origin story for a B-movie franchise. Pretty good idea. Get a top shelf actor and use the technology of the day to give a B-movie franchise an A-list face lift. Here's the problem--this origin story remains about as B-movie as you can get. Cheesy plots, cheesy dialogue and flat-lined performances are all over this film. Only the motion capture technology is an upgrade from the original.
It must have seemed like a good idea to cast a good actor like James Franco in the lead but his performance is as flat and uninteresting as his hosting work on the Oscar telecast and at times he seems just as out of place as he was as a host. In fact, this movie fails in all things human. The love story between Franco and Freida Pinto has less chemistry than a Performing Arts High School, John Lithgow's alzheimer's-afflicted Dad is cliched and predictable (a fault of the writing, not Lithgow) and the bad guys are tepid at best (Tom Felton from the Harry Potter franchise has seemingly found a niche as the go-to teenage creep). And it is a long haul suffering through the human elements of this thing before you get to the good stuff...ie. the monkeys.
And the monkeys are pretty darn good. They use motion capture (on that motion-capture specialist, Andy Serkis) to find real emotional intricacies in these apes. Too bad they didn't use it on Franco. Once the revolution kicks in, the movie finds its momentum and becomes a decent entertainment, in a B-movie sort of way. It will serve as a Saturday matinee escape. But really, if you are in a prequel and find yourself longing for the acting and entertainment value of the Charleton Heston-lead originals, aren't you kind of in a whole lot of trouble?
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