If you remember the original from 1968 (I wasn’t born yet, wink) watching it again with Charlton Heston seems silly-nonsense and robotic just like that fake mechanical shark in Jaws. But in watching this prequel, despite many nuances that will set up the original, CGI somehow ruins the charm. The Scientific company is called Gen-sys (perhaps Genesis?) and it employs Will (James Franco) who takes his research seriously. Afterall if they can develop a cure for Alzheimer’s he’ll not only make the company rich, but he’ll cure his dad (John Lithgow) who has it.
When an orphaned chimp, Caesar is born, Will takes him home, and discovers that the drug works (the medicine was passed through the DNA of his mother test chimp). Caesar can read sixth grade level at age three. The girlfriend (Freida Pinto) falls for Franco and the chimp, who, fast-forward years later becomes grownup Caesar (Andy Serkis) a sort of Uber monkey who has “heightened intelligence” or in other words… he can read Proust. Kidding.
At one point, when Caesar is out of control, he gets locked up in a monkey prison where all the other primates flip out because he’s wearing the latest fashions and they’re naked. This is when the film moves from sensitive to insanely sci-fi and one can’t be certain where the movie is headed next, but we can be certain of one thing. Neither Pinto nor Franco can act. Especially Pinto whose sole purpose in any film – since waiting on that train platform in Slumdog Millionaire – is that when she’s on the screen, she’s gorgeous to stare at. That smile and that face bathe us in her radiant beauty. Her dialog is a constant administering of warning signs: “Don’t do that. Don’t control that. Can’t change that” and not much else except for being the pretty sidekick. She and Will are on a mission, except along the way we lose sight of just what that mission is when a character shift takes place. The good guys become bad guys, the chimps go berserk and well all hell breaks loose in the great outdoors. Suddenly our sweet movie of boy and chimp turns into a violent video game. Hey wait a second….aren’t we supposed to LIKE these apes? And as though that’s not enough… you’ll never want to picnic near any big red forest outside of San Francisco again. Two and a half tiaras