Bookshelf Battle

Oh, those wacky apes.

BQB here with a review of the latest monkey movie.

I told myself I wasn’t going to watch this one, largely because I thought the last installment, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, was a bit of a stinkfest. And frankly, they’ve made a lot of these movies over the past decade and IMO, none of them have been very memorable. The main characters are CGI apes, after all, so the films are low on human actors with performances that will stick in your mind, and yet though animated, don’t have the same heart as say, a full-on Disney type cartoon feature. So, you’re just left with a lot of animated monkeys without a lot of feeling.

But I’m a movie buff and I was bored so I went and while I think this one will come and go like its predecessors without a lot of fanfare, I have to admit its a lot better than the last few installments. A better story and better character development go a long way.

Past modern ape films (as opposed to the 1960s originals) showed us “The Planet of the Apes” in its infancy. Humans experimenting with a virus that goes awry, causing monkeys to get smarter and take over and other films saw the early years where humans and apes fought for control of the planet.

This film takes place many years in the future, long after the death of Caesar, an ape leader from previous films who managed to keep the peace between humans and apes. Now the apes reign supreme and humans have become subordinate. The same virus that made monkeys smart made humans dumb, so the few humans that survive just wander the countryside, foraging and rooting around in the dirt like dumb animals. Most of them do, anyway. A handful of smart humans unaffected by the virus remain.

Noah (Owen Teague) is a young ape from the peaceful bird clan, apes who appreciate nature and study falconry, bonding apes with birds who obey their commands. Alas, one day while in search of his own bird to train, evil apes under the command of super evil ape King Proximus (Kevin Durand) burn his village, kill most of the apes and take the few survivors hostage, including his friends and mother.

Swearing to avenge his slain father and rescue his mother and friends, Owen goes on a long hero’s journey to…dun dun dun “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a forbidden place his father had long warned him to stay away from, for it is ruled by evil apes who kidnap and enslave other apes for nefarious purposes.

Along the way, Owen is joined on his quest by the wise scholar orangutan Roca (Peter Macon) who is a gay ape, because why wouldn’t he be? It’s 2024, after all. He becomes a mentor to the young monkey, educating about the world he has largely been sheltered from his whole life.

He’s also joined by Mae (Freya Allan), one of the last few humans capable of intelligent thought and speech. She wants to rescue her fellow humans just as badly as Owen wants to rescue his fellow chimps, so they’ll have to work together. She’s also one of very few human actors in the entire movie (William H. Macy makes a welcome guest appearance half way through) so you will have to accept that this flick is pretty much one great big glorified cartoon.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I still think these modern monkey movies have been for the most part a pile of drek, but this one had some heart as it followed a hero’s journey structure, a young being forced to grow up quick and find himself and overcome adversity so you can’t go wrong there.