Rated PG-13

Conventional wisdom, or at least pop culture, knows that everything is better with monkeys. In many cases, as evidenced by hundreds of instances of our nearest genetic cousins riding tricycles, raising kittens, puffing cigars, solving international espionage plots on TV or occasionally hassling Powerpuff Girls, this could be true. But it turns out, these little jungle comedians are complex emotional beings with superhuman speed and strength, a tendency to lose their temper, and just enough self awareness to know exactly which bits of a human’s body are softer than simian fingernails and teeth. So, in reality, some things, like running down the street trying to protect your soft bits, may not be so much better with monkeys.

One might take issue with any incursion of reality that asserts itself on a work with “Planet of the Apes” in the title, but it may be just what the franchise was missing. Best known as the warmly, if misguidedly regarded 1960s sci-fi time-warp starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, and worst known for the host of declining sequels that littered the subsequent decades in movie theaters, primetime television and Saturday morning cartoons (culminating in the abominable attempt by Tim Burton to kill the damn dirty thing once and for all in 2001) the “Apes” series has suffered many difficulties. But beyond the occasional tentative poke at political allegory, aspiration to verisimilitude was surely not something you could blame them for. The whole premise was based on a power model turned upside-down, and the cascade of absurd improbabilities that resulted—solid “Twilight Zone” reasoning (the original’s screenplay was written by Rod Serling, after all), but with unfortunately diminishing results. 

It’s an interesting tack, then, that “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” would simply turn that very conceit back on its feet, returning to the “natural” roles of humans as masters and scientists and the catastrophes they can wreak, however good their intentions, on the heads of the “lower” creatures on which they experiment. 

Here, James Franco is cast as a handsome young genius, so set on discovering a viral cure for his dad’s debilitating Alzheimer’s that he fails to foresee any possible negative repercussions of his research. Testing a virus that causes advanced brain cell generation on primates known to tear the testicles off of those who feed and care for them? What could possibly go wrong? 

The only chimpanzee to escape the first round of tests alive—a captive-born simian named Caesar who matures into adolescence under the care of the good doctor—develops razor keen observational and deductive skills, and 1) begins to grow suspicious of himself as an outsider both among humans and his own kind; and 2) gets really grumpy about it. Only then do the seeds of the original plotline begin to take root. And yes, things get hairy.

The value that “Rise” and its makers place on physical authenticity goes a long way, for better or worse, to prove that mo-cap has finally, conclusively trumped makeup, at least in the realm of believable onscreen entities. The work that the digital wizards of Weta Studios has done to create what truly appear to be living, breathing apes in this film is nothing short of stunning. Having already earned trophies for their groundbreaking efforts on “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong,” they’ve upped their game on every level for this one. 

Sure, the realization of Smeagol was a stunning achievement in his day, and King Kong broke the mold, but let’s face it, Kong was 60 feet tall, and as a species, it’s fair to say we’ve never before seen a whatever-the-hell Smeagol might have been. But chimps? These are familiar, real-world creatures, and if even slightly misrepresented, it’d be all too easy to spot. But Weta completely pulls it off, with help from full-body-actor Andy Serkis, who has worked with them previously in the motion-capture suit as both Smeagol and Kong. There’s no probable way, under so many layers of pixels and engineering, that he’s going to win a best actor Oscar for his thoroughly compassionate and emotional portrayal of the genetically amped uber-chimp Caesar, but he deserves some kind of official recognition for this. He’s not just playing a chimp with a human mind, he’s playing a chimp with a significantly powerful chimp mind, and the difference is perfectly apparent, and really really creepy on top.

No degree of intelligence will take the edge off being a lonely freak. Caesar’s voicelessness adds a despairing gravity to his isolation and frustration with his inability to connect in any natural way with his surroundings. And Serkis manages to convey great depths of this animal’s confusion and suffering through exceptionally expressive body language and a deep, simmering gaze. 

It’s unfortunate that this level of sophistication is not spread more evenly throughout the film. The screenplay, though more a revision of the fourth film of the cycle, “Conquest OTPOTA,” is positively riddled with unnecessary references to Serling’s original, squandering a clear opportunity to be truly original for the sake of a few cheap call-outs. Some are admittedly subtle and sneaky and well deployed (Caesar quietly working on a puzzle of the Statue of Liberty, for example) but most are just gratuitous. A female chimp is introduced as Cornelia, an obvious reference to McDowell’s old role, but is then whisked away to nowhere. Tom “Draco” Felton, leaving his usual slime trail as a cruel ape sanctuary “caretaker,” shouts not one, but two of Heston’s most iconic lines, and eyes just roll. He doesn’t deserve them.

The other human exchanges are never half as compelling as the interactions of the apes. The filmmakers would most likely tell you they cast John Lithgow as the father struggling to retain his faculties because he’s a professional, dependable actor, but it seems more likely that it was just a misplaced attempt to draw some kind of “Harry and the Hendersons” association. And Franco, though demonstrably capable of strong work in the indie realm, is here on full autopilot for the duration. One can’t help but wonder if it would have been more interesting if the WETA crew just cast a chimp in the part and put him in a motion capture suit with a Franco model drawn over it.

These concerns, however, just flirt around the periphery of an otherwise engaging and insightful story, a coming of age tale unlike anything we’ve ever quite seen before. It’s fun to watch the slow reversal of protagonist and antagonist, and to empathize with both along the journey. With Serkis’ performance as a solid jumping off point, and the foundations laid for a new approach to the old material, there will surely be more Furious George stories in our future.