Audiences go ‘ape’ for Rise of the Planet….
COMPARED to other summer blockbusters, the long anticipated Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is both telling and brief in that all is revealed inside 110 minutes. The real star of the show is the baby ape, Caesar, saved when an experiment goes wrong and who strikes up a bond with his handler (John Lithgow). Oh yes, there is a Limerick connection in that the film stars Jamie Harris, son of Richard Harris, in the role of Rodney.
Watch out also for Freida Pinto, as Caroline Aranho. Freida who, you might well ask. She played the female lead in Slumdog Millionaire.
More seasoned moviegoers will recall the 1968 original of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, rebooted by Tim Burton at the turn of the century, but this one far outweighs both in just about everything.
There have been numerous other Ape films, of course. Bolstered by strong reviews, it took an impressive $1.25 million in 114 midnight showings in the United States last Friday.
Numbers for those early a.m. showings compare favourably to the $700,000 Universal banked in midnight showings of Cowboys & Aliens-due here next week- at 1,200 locations.
Set in San Francisco, it is a reality-based cautionary tale, a science fiction/science fact blend, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.
Nowadays we take special effects for granted, but if you think you’ve seen it all, wait till you see Caesar and his ape army battling it out on the Golden Gate Bridge, not to mention the apes escape from ‘jail’.
There are also great action scenes that exhibit the great strength of the ape. In fact, the action scenes mixed with the ape’s intelligence are very interesting and very entertaining.
James Franco plays Will Rodman, a scientist experimenting on chimps so he can find a cure for Alzheimer’s. His father (John Lithgow) suffers from the disease so Will justifies the suffering his company, Gen-Sys, inflicts of the lab apes. Looking for a villain? The movie finds it in genetic testing. When one experiment goes wrong, Will saves a baby ape, Caesar, and brings him home along with a supply of serum to test on the animal and Will’s own father.
Things go wrong, as they must.
Enjoy the chimps, orangutans and gorillas.
The Smurfs fail to take off
THE Smurfs are in town this weekend and their arrival on the big screen should be sufficient to get the younger folk excited.
Time did not allow me to get to the preview screening in Dublin, but the word from the other side of the Atlantic is that this one is something of a let down with little to recommend it. One critic referred to it as a ‘total disaster’.
The story is set around the Smurfs escaping from Gargamel who found them in their village.
In some weird way, they come across this portal they knew nothing about until that time, and they are forced to go into this portal in order to escape from Gargamel and his CG cat Azriel.
There, the Smurfs stumble upon New York City where they find the care of Doogie Houser and his cute, pregnant wife. They must find a way back home while being hunted by Gargamel on the streets of New York, and Doogie is trying to not to get fired from his cosmetics job.
