Dude… A Monkey!

Title:  Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  If you haven’t heard of this movie, you might just be missing out on one of the greatest action movies of 2011.

Introduction:  I got this from the library on DVD for free.  I came quite close to seeing it in theaters.

Location:  All around the jungle… haha, j/k.  You know they had a budget for locations wherever they wanted.

Plot:  When I first read that there was going to be a new Planet of the Apes movie, my immediate thought was, “Great, another remake.   An attempt to revive a great franchise with mediocre movies and merchandising”.   You know, basically the same way I feel whenever I read about any new movie coming out.    Then I found out that this would be a prequel of sorts to the original Planet of the Apes.   Hmm.   I actually found that to be quite intriguing.   Think about it:  In the original, we have a human who finds himself on, well, a planet full of apes that act human.   But no one ever really said how that happened.   Sure, there are probably some books or more likely comic books out there that explained the origin once before, but to see it in a big Hollywood movie made me quite excited.

Acting:  James Franco is the man and John Lithgow still has it.   What more do you need to know?

Production:  It looks and feels like a modern movie, which is good, but in terms of transferring to the other movies in the series you get what I like to call the Star Wars Prequels Problem.

Sex/Nudity:  Actually, no, which considering the apes is probably a good idea.

Special Effects:  They were what you would expect from a movie released in 2011.   The funny thing is that about 99% of the time I bought into the idea of the apes being real.   In the back of my mind, I knew that they were not because even some of the things they were doing were obvious, but I mean, yeah, it was a nice touch of looking real but not going too far as to make you realize they weren’t real.    I very much bought into the whole movie, and the special effects sucking me in helped that out a lot.

Overall Verdict:  I’ll be the first to admit (and complain about it) that most movies lately tend to not be living up to their hype.  I’ve read about things on paper that seemed funny or just a great story… I mean, how do you mess up a movie with James Franco and Kenny Powers?  I don’t know, but it wasn’t funny.   How do you mess up a movie about frickin’ Thor?  Really?  THOR!!   Anyway, I digress.   Nothing can kill The Blob (except for cold) and Hollywood can continue to crank out perpetually disappointing movies, but every once in a while one will slip through that leaves me wanting more.   This is one of those movies.   Now if you’ll excuse me, this review has thrown me into a coughing fit.