There's a Robot Chicken sketch, of all things, that always made me chuckle. It recreates an episode of *Law & Order* using anthropomorphized chickens who only speak in clucks and bawks. The joke is that the rhythms of *L&O* are so standardized at this point, that you can essentially have characters talking nonsense and still get the point across as long as you keep it in that form. But it also stands for another interesting proposition -- that things like body language, tone, and how someone behaves in a particular situation or environment can establish a character and tell a story even without the venerable words that those pesky writers are always talking about.

That's *Rise of the Planet of the Apes*'s (heretofore to be abbreviated *RotPotA* both for convenience and because it sounds like a dish at T.G.I.Friday's) greatest achievement. Though he speaks only four words in the entire film (three of which coming at the very end), he is a character the we see grow, change, react, suffer, lead, and love. Boatloads of credit should go to Andy Serkis and the team of animators, special effects crew, and motion capture specialists who brought this amazing being to life on the silver screen.

Handicapped without the ability to use dialogue with Caesar, the film has to rely on Serkis's expressions and the character's actions. When we witness him pouncing on a neighbor who hassles a dementia-added loved one, and then see the horror and fear on everyone's faces, it's frightening and complex and sad. Caesar is still ape enough to instinctively attack an aggressor and use his considerable skills to do harm, but he's human enough to feel things like love for his erstwhile grandfather, to have the desire to protect the people he cares about, and to feel shame and self-doubt and anger when outsiders see him as a freak.

The first half of the film soars by leaning into this. Despite the fact that James Franco (who is perfectly solid as the scientist who raises Caesar) receives top billing, this is a story about a very special creature having an existential crisis, trying to figure out who and what he is, and where he fits into this world. It's hard to make a story where a character assaults innocent people and mounts an attack on a major city sympathetic, but *Rise* pulls it off.

It does so by creating an incredible juxtaposition, between an ape who is slowly developing the mind of a human, and an elderly man who is slowly losing his. Caesar is, effectively, a teenager -- rebelling against his father, trying to figure out what he's meant to do, and slowly but surely understanding the wider world and his peculiar place in it. At the same time, Charles Rodman (the stellar-as-always John Lithgow) is fading away, meaning well and finding himself not adept at being the man he used to be. They're two sides to the same coin, and Charles's journey in the film adds shading and depth to Caesar's.

Unfortunately, the second half of the film takes a decidedly different turn, and *Rise* never really recovers. Instead of the loving human father, the avuncular Alzheimer's patient, the affectionate-but-concerned zoologist, the film surrounds Caesar with a prick of a handler, a corrupt zookeeper-type, and a slimy corporate shill who only cares about money. Gone are the interesting characters who have complicated, deep relationships with the protagonist, meant to be replaced by one-note, trite antagonists.

Some of that is obviously necessary. As interested as someone like me would be in ninety minutes of meditation on how a sentient ape would adjust to having the intellect to understand the world but a taxonomy that means he'll never be a full member of it, the folks behind the film need more conflict than that, and in service of the larger *Planet of the Apes* mythos, need to motivate Caesar's turn. Director Rupert Wyatt has to give Caesar a reason to turn his back on humanity--despite the humans who raised him--and lead the ape revolution that will one day consume the whole planet.

To that end, the film does well to both explain Caesar's change of heart and fit in some nice world-building at the margins. Though Caesar has his doubt and moments of unhappiness and questioning, like everyone who grows up does, he is a happy member of society (more or less) when he is with people who treat him as an equal, and as a person. But when thrown into captivity, for reasons he does not fully understand, and treated like, well, an animal, he grows resentful. But he's also smart. Having been isolated from his fellow chimpanzees, he gradually assimilates with them, makes friends with them, teaches them, and earns his place as their leader.

But at the same time, the film subtly lays the groundwork for the world we find in *Planet of the Apes*. A treatment for Alzheimer's that focuses on neural regeneration and requires testing on apes before it can be approved for use on humans is a surprisingly plausible explanation for how intelligent apes could come about, or at least passes the smell test for a science fiction film. There's subtle mention of astronauts lost in space as a nice nod to the series's original, and the next mutation of the Alzheimer's treatment accelerating the more resilient apes' intelligence while having deleterious, impliedly pandemic effects on humans helps explain the change in command, so to speak. What's more, *Rise* does well in its nods to its predecessor, from a nice--if-clumsy use of the "damned dirty apes" line to a policeman netting one of the apes in a reverse of the original's most iconic scenes.

But then, the film devolves into the usual disaster movie spectacle, with an army of simians launching themselves across the Golden Gate bridge to a symphony of toothless destruction. It's a nice enough set piece, with a few twists here and there to keep things interesting, and well-animated apes bounding hither and yon. It just quickly becomes apparent that as Caesar takes revenge on the various bad guys in the film, and then commands his ape army to get into a blockbuster battle with the police (and a conveniently present corporate executive), the philosophical bent of the first half of the film has been abandoned for the usual pre-viz spectacle.

It's a shame, because the film brings Caesar to life in such an amazing fashion, and tells an incredible story about how slowly learns more about where he came from, what makes him different, and how he decides to better his people rather than stand with ones who capture and kill them, despite his upbringing. It's powerful, complex material that touches on important ideas about what it means to be sentient and how we treat those who are different from us, be they human, simian or otherwise. It's just too bad that it gets lost in a sea of action movie cliches and stock characters. But Caesar, the Moses of this tale of a man raised by one people and born to lead another, is anything but stock, and his presence and journey alone is worth the price of admission.