Story. Will Rodman (James Franco) a lead scientist of a company doing experiments on chimpanzee's to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, after a test on a female chimpanzee which looking towards success seems to go terribly wrong, they discover a baby chimp which she was protecting and Will Rodman is given the task to either put down or look after the baby chimp, Will Rodman takes home the chimp which he names Caesar to look after and throughout the soon months and years he begins to notice that the genes from his mother has been distended down to him from the sheer intelligence of Caesar. Will Rodman decides to continue on with his research mainly due to Will's father Charles Rodman (John Lithgow) who has Alzheimer's but is he doing it for him or his company? With that question in place and years go by Will decides to inject Caesars genes into his father for when he wakes up the next day to the father he once knew and love. Back to Caesar, he has become even more intelligent since, Will has taught him sign language and is able to do very complex puzzles and games, Caesar has also become very close with Will's family and has practically become part of the family which he loves and cares about as much as any human would but as he gets older he also get curious to where has come from? where are his real family? And what is Caesars purpose? maybe Caesar is becoming to curious and this will lead Caesar/Will and their curiosity to a fate which they both would of never have thought.
My thoughts on this film are quite mixed but the main one I would go with so far is simply cool and mainly from Caesar , throughout most of the film it feels like its trying to purposely make you cry, you feel so much empathy and compassion for this character and for me it was not the ground breaking CGI of Caesar that made this film from the effects of Avatar, it was Andy Serkis performance, this truly shows a man who knows exactly what he is doing when it comes to cinema. Let downs I would say James Franco, giving his reputation lately due to 127 Hours and obviously the Spiderman series all to me that was special was his signature smile I've seem to have pick up on, he is a good actor but I was expecting much more from him in this film but perhaps a little bit too much. Frieda Pinto, David Oyelowo came across to been the other main character let downs, they did their job but their performances where very media core and sometimes it came across very unnecessary for them actually to be in the film which had me quite annoyed in some ways but thankfully I was brought back by Andy Serkis and the mythology of this film.
Action, there wasn't too much action or too much going on really in this film but neither was I complaining or unsatisfied because of this but they really did try to make the human species look stupid, especially with the scenes on the San Francisco bridge, I would at least had thought, hmm yes where going after a lot of apes, last time I checked apes like to climb a lot perhaps we should check below and up above the bridge but no lets even though these apes are obviously smarter after Caesar rides in on a horse.
The ending "Caesar Is home" was a great way to end the film but not the best, all the way through the film I had the feeling it was going to end in a way of King Kong did when James Franco spent most of the time chasing him across San Francisco, I had an idea Caesar would meet his demise upon almost reaching his freedom but where he did not succeed, the others made it so his sacrifice was not in vein and when this did not happen I was actually rather shocked, not disappointed just shocked, it seemed a perfect way to end the character Caesar seem so we spent half of the film learning Caesar and understanding the feelings of Caesar to why he had to do what he did.
I was rather happy to see John Lithgow in this, it brought back some Third Rock From The Sun moments and Dexter, it was also nice to see that he did quite a good performance and apart from some disappointment from James Franco it was still nice to see his career still going nice and strong.
Overall a very lovely and compassionate film, the human characters could have used some work but I guess this shows the apes are the smarter species.
8.4/10
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