Review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (2011)

Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes certainly works, if only admissibly so. It works because at its center is a vivid, coherent emotional journey with a real payoff, yet it never ascends because the filmmaking, although technically flawless, is too cloddish, facile and jackhammer-subtle.  
-
It's also a film that constantly teeters between being genuinely moving and terribly cloying and is inevitably saved by the digitally enhanced-performance of Andy Serkis as Caesar, the genetically altered ape who goes on to lead the revolution.
-
Performance-capture technology (initiated by Peter Jackson, intensified by James Cameron) takes another leap here, not only in the way that it achieves near photo-realistic chimps, but in the way that it brings real emotion and wordless expression to artificial characters. (The first few times you see an ape in the film, it will feel uneasy. After fifteen minutes, you won't even bat an eye.)
-
This franchise (spawned with Franklin J. Schaffner's spooky, allegorical 1968 original) has already seen the ape revolution play out in the third sequel, the violent, straight-forward Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
-
However, director Rupert Wyatt (who here puts together the fastest moving addition to the franchise, if nothing else) has stated that Rise is very much a new beginning to this unique Planet of the Apes series, a beginning that gives rise to these apes through the perils of animal testing and captivity. 
-
But you could hardly fault this new creative team for re-writing the genesis of the ape revolution, seeing as how befuddling the old time-loop was when it was introduced in Escape From the Planet of the Apes.  
-
In fact, you could say that one of the biggest problems with Rise, other than its aforementioned hokeyness, is its over-appreciation for the original, sprinkling in a distracting amount of callbacks and hints that do no favors for this new reboot. (Seeing the Icarus take-off on TV is great, but watching Tom Felton roll through every line of Charlton Heston dialogue is excruciating, unwarranted and frankly, tired.)
-
Then again, given that this is a series that stretches five decades, six directors and seven films, perhaps the fact that Rise of the Planet of the Apes manages to ever so slightly resurrect the franchise - albeit fleetingly - is all the praise it needs. [C+]