Movie Reviews: Rise of the Planet of the Apes + Muirhouse

This is a prequel/reboot to the classic series. Will (James Franco) experiments on chimps to find a cure for Alzheimers via gene therapy neurogenesis. But it goes awry due to events that Franklin (Tyler Labine of ’Reaper’, ’Invasion’ and ’Tucker and Dale vs. Evil’) the chimp handler somehow failed to notice. Will brings a baby chimp named Cesar home to raise. Caesar is intelligent due to the gene therapy so Will also shoots his Alzheimers ridden father Charles (John Lithgow of ‘Raising Cain’) up with the Alzheimers cure. Years pass.

There is a creepy scene in zoo, Caesar can sign, Will shacks up with vet Caroline, Caesar displays aggression and Charles’ cure wears off. Caesar who is an obvious CGI creation is doomed to a nasty ’sanctuary’ run by Brian Cox and his two moron sons one of whom is played by Tom Felton. Will decides to fiddle with his cure by creating an aggressive virus strain which ends up infecting and killing Franklin. Not that Will notices.

Caesar is ill treated by Tom Felton. Apes fight. An orang-utan is taught sign language by Caesar. Charles dies. Will tries to take Caesar home but he won’t go. So Caesar steals the cure and uses it to make the other apes smart. There is mention of a spaceflight to Mars which seems to go missing. Are those the astronauts that would feature in the original film? The apes attack, Caesar speaks and Will’s boss does stuff. Apes rampage on a fog shrouded Golden Gate Bridge. There is death and destruction all thanks to dodgy scientist Will. The apes run off and the nasty neighbour (David Hewlett of ‘Stargate Atlantis’) turns out to be an airline pilot and he spreads the virus Will created worldwide. This was not dark and visionary. More deathly dull and there was no emotional connection.

Best Lines:

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Australia’s actual most haunted house is the setting for this inept ‘horror’. In 2007 Phillip Muirhouse spent the night on the Monte Cristo homestead and ended up a half naked hammer wielding raving murder suspect as a result. Phillip was an author and a ghost hunter. He was also off-puttingly self-congratulatory and full of ranting self pity, entitlement and truculent spoilt monosyllabic whining. Various inane airheads chatted around him. There was a woeful absence of scares as Phillip ran around the homestead screaming at hideous wallpaper and ranting about wind frontage. He did a lot of walking and bad acting and screaming in perpetual darkness. This singularly failed to scare and was rancid. ‘Veronica’s Closet’ and ‘Storm of the Century’ was scarier than this. The ending makes no logical sense.

Best Lines:

“What’s with the hammer?”