Lithgow and Cox are great in small roles that are contrarily pitiable and loathsome, but Freida Pinto is little more than a stand-in girlfriend for Will. Franco makes Will a sympathetic and likable character without forcing the film to waste tons of time on his back-story. The story builds to a great ape escape in San Francisco, and though the finale feels a bit like an extended set-up to a sequel, the film as a whole is satisfying. The CGI apes are not only more realistic, they are more menacing, too. Weta's apes do not appear as late additions to a scene, as they effortlessly interact with the human actors. Everything from Caesar's facial expressions to his body movements as he climbs a giant redwood tree is incredibly realistic. Serkis, who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, gives a hell of a performance, and his work is reflected in the computer-generated Caesar. The visual effects in Rise of the Planet of the Apes are some of the best ever, particularly the charismatic Caesar. The duplicitous drug puts in motion the trappings of an ape-led society with Caesar as its leader. Will's new drug proves deadly to some humans, but in primates it unlocks much potential. The film's science is shaky at times, but this is hardly a fatal flaw. Caesar is not like the other apes, and his mind quickly turns to revolt. Caesar ends up in an ape sanctuary after violently protecting Charles from a nasty neighbor, and is mistreated by the facility's manager, John Landon (Brian Cox), and his son, Dodge (Tom Felton). None of the previous films in the franchise explored the origins of the hyper-intelligent apes, so Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an interesting change of pace. Caesar continues to grow smarter, and Will uses the chimp's DNA to create what he thinks is a successful cure for Alzheimer's. Will adopts Caesar and takes him to the home he shares with his aging father, Charles (John Lithgow), who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Scientist Will Rodman (Franco) is forced to start drug trials over from scratch after the mishap upsets the board of his biotech company. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is all about Caesar, a chimpanzee that inherits the intelligence-boosting effects of Alzheimer's drug ALZ-112 from his mother, who is killed while protecting Caesar from lab technicians. A brilliant performance by Andy Serkis and some amazing Weta Digital effects are standouts as the film lands amid an ape revolution. Director Rupert Wyatt's film wisely begins a new story in which James Franco tests a possible Alzheimer's cure on lab apes to astonishing and possibly deadly results. Turns out, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty great. The early buzz was lukewarm, and the decision to use CGI apes met with harsh criticism from some fans of the earlier films. Tim Burton's 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes was not universally acclaimed, to say the least, and Twentieth Century Fox let one of its biggest franchises lie dormant for a decade before releasing this summer's Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
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