This review's probably going to be a little more thoughtful than funny this time around. Sorry dudes, but sometimes life throws a super serious film your way and it seriously demands the treatment its seriousness demands, seriously.
I haven't seen any of the Planet of the Apes films besides the first one, which isn't something I ever meant to happen but sometimes life throws you a curveball. You wake up one day and you're almost 30, and guess what? You're the guy who's only seen the first Planet of the Apes. How did this happen? What were you doing instead of watching Apes II, III, and lest we forget, IV? Maybe you were doing something really fucking stupid, like not updating your movie blog, or watching other movies and thinking about how they'd be perfect for your movie blog, then not writing about them. Is it possible that maybe you're too lazy to watch all four Planet of the Apes movies? Regardless, this is a problem.
And although I wish I could say that the reason it took me so long time to post this review was because I was fixing this serious problem, it's not true. It was mostly because I was scared. Pressure was on big time to properly convey that Apes was rad, and totally fucking awesome. In my heart though, I felt I was not worthy of the task. And so, instead of gazing into mediocrity's dead eyes and then violently gouging them out, I shrunk like a wilting lily.
This was cowardly of me.
I have thought long and hard on this, and I know now that this weakness within me must be exterminated! For it is the source of my many problems problems like:
Yelling too much at parties!
Having a sub par sense of direction!
Unemployment!
Fear of relationships!
Avarice!
Not seeing all the Apes movies!
And so from henceforth! I vow never again will never bow before the ultimate challenge that is reviewing a new Planet of the Apes movie. This I promise you, faithful blog reader! Never again!
Rise of the Planet of the Apes begins with the invention of a drug that when administered completes the intellectual evolutionary leap for apes, setting off a chain of events causing a little ape named Caesar to ponder what its place in the world is, halfway between ape and man. If you suspect you're not emotionally ready to become seriously involved with a computer generated monkey named Caesar, prepare to get your reality shattered. That string of 1's and 0's is superior at aping being an ape than any people in the movie are at aping being human, or ape, if there were guys in ape costumes at some point during Apes.
If all this sounds kinda heavy for what you thought was gonna be a cool ass romp in the Summer bullshit blockbuster zone you're correct. This movie is nuts. If you haven't picked it up from the title of the film yet, this is kind of an origin story for the Planet of the Apes which (SPOILER ALERT) is actually Earth, so you know the apes are going to rise up, and eventually take that shit over. The thing about this is, you're not emphasizing with the humans while this is happening. Dude, what so crazy.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes was easily the best movie I saw this Summer and the most subversive piece of modern popcorn cinema I've seen since probably Robocop, it's got an Oscar worthy performance by some computer shit, and is the first blockbuster that tackles serious animal rights themes. Check it out, highly recommended.
Well, that review sucked. For future reviews, I'll be mixing older movies in again cause I want to, and it's been kinda hard to get a ride to the theater recently.
