Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Grade: D

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a round hole, and I am a square peg. It’s not a badly-made movie; many technical elements are quite strong. The score is lovely, and exactly what it should be. You’re never aware of it, except for when you choose to zero in on it, and then, you will enjoy. The set pieces, particularly the apes’ village, are impressive. You could write an “Octopus’s Garden” or “Under the Sea” type song about how great it would be to live there. The apes have the most expressive faces I’ve seen in one of these movies. These aren’t blank-staring unchanging eyes with Muppetish mouths flapping up and down. Some serious time and care was put into it. So what didn’t I like? Everything else. I won’t say the film lost me, because it never had me.

The epic fantasy adventure story is obviously not for me. This won’t be one of the more informative reviews you’ll find on the internet, and it’s one of the few times I recommend you go elsewhere if you want a deeper dig. The bulk of KOTPOTA’s 145 minute runtime is a lengthy Odyssean revenge journey, to recover a lost family member. I initially figured this would be a “humans vs. apes” scenario, but it’s mainly apes vs. each other. Sadly, that is imitation of life. There is a large amount of fighting between the same kind, and here, it’s the men who are causing the most trouble with their monkeying around. The ape-riarchy is in full swing.

I’m not that concerned with spoilers in this case, and I’ll try to be vague, but if you don’t want to know too much (and I’ve given you such a wealth of information already), then skip over this paragraph. I had an elephant-in-the-room “but what about” question regarding a late plot point. Let’s just say: the apes speak English and sound just like humans, so, hypothetically, how would a person REALLY know who they’re talking to on the other side of the radio?

This may sound random and arcane, but bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. I’ve been a Mandela Effect enthusiast for a few years. Now, I don’t think anything supernatural is happening; I believe it’s things like incorrect memory, influenced memory, learning something wrong, and the like – but I am interested in the subject. With Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, I’m getting a taste of how the heavily Mandela Effected must feel (the ones who have such a strong feeling about remembering something the wrong way, that they think they’re right, and things have changed). They are in the minority, as I am with my opinion here. I will feel relieved when I see the few-and-far-between folks who are with me on this movie. I’ve seen it hailed as a triumph by most critics so far. We know “Fire” is a no-no – is it against the law to yell “I don’t care” in a movie theater?

Grade: D