Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is an underwhelming bit of monkey business

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Directed by Wes Ball

Written by Josh Friedman

Starring Owen Teague, Freya Allan and Kevin Durand

Classification PG; 145 minutes

Opens in theatres May 10

Unlike so many remade, rebooted and reimagined franchises, there is no such thing as a “bad” Planet of the Apes movie.

Sure, some of the films – nine up till now, not counting the 1970s television series, which was then re-edited into five TV movies – were as satisfying as a blackened banana. But each entry still contained the following elements, all of which have been scientifically proven (using the Dr. Zaius empirical method) to entertain: monkeys fighting humans, monkeys fighting each other, monkeys using weapons to fight both humans and each other, and, most importantly, monkeys riding horses. If you cannot understand the pure cinematic joy of watching monkeys galloping across the plains on the backs of mighty steeds – not to mention occasionally travelling backward or forward in time, and/or causing nuclear apocalypses – then I don’t know what to say. You just might be missing a link.

So on that level, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a fun enough distraction. Featuring more hot monkey-on-monkey action than any of the Apes entrants before – even if it is digitally created, rather than prosthetic-enabled in the traditional Roddy McDowall style – Kingdom has so much simian shenanigans, including a whole lotta horses, that it threatens to imagine what might happen if Michael Bay acquired the National Geographic channel. But it is also a self-consciously serious affair, absent the imaginative wit and propulsive momentum of its immediate precursor, 2017′s War for the Planet of the Apes, which was dark but far from dour.

Taking place “many generations” after the events of War – in which noble ape leader Caesar (Andy Serkis) dies while trying to ensure a peaceful future for his brethren – Kingdom follows the travails of a young monkey named Noa (Owen Teague). The chimp leads a peaceful life with his clan among the rusted, vine-covered ruins of civilization, with the few remaining herds of humanity (rendered mute and intellectually inferior due to the virus unleashed hundreds of years ago in Rise of the Planet of the Apes) lingering in the background like annoying squirrels.

All is fine in Noa’s world until the ferocious soldiers of a self-proclaimed ape king named Proximus (Kevin Durand) begin to cut a brutal path of destruction through the land (dang right they’re riding horses). Separated from his family and friends, Noa embarks on a perilous journey across the wilderness to confront Proximus, while also befriending a mysterious human (Freya Allan) and a wise orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon), who has made it his life mission to carry forward the true teachings of Caesar.

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By centring its conflict on the oppressive rule of Proximus, a despot who has twisted the benevolent words of Caesar to fit his own fascist ends, Kingdom has the potential to deliver a provocative bit of monkey business. Yet politics are the least of Kingdom’s concerns or interests, with director Wes Ball (The Maze Runner) instead focused on pushing the limits of technology to deliver the most photorealistic animals in cinematic history. Which, to be fair, he and his collaborators at visual-effects behemoth Weta deliver.

Noa and his pals are aesthetically enchanting creations, a genuinely impressive, even intimidating, blend of the real and surreal. The nuances of a true flesh-and-blood performance collide with the magic of next-gen CGI to create something eye-popping. There are only one or two quick-flash moments in which Noa and company swing uneasily into the uncanny valley, only to Tarzan themselves right back to believability.

Yet gawking can only take audiences so far – and the journey that Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman lay out is a long, treacherous, and exhausting one. What might have been a lean and mean affair at two hours is instead bloated to Harambe-sized proportions, up to and including a third-act development that prioritizes the least-interesting characters in the movie.

And while Teague, Macon and Durand bring impressive levels of humanity to their apes – Durand in particular is terrifying in both Proximus’s intellectual eloquence and brute physicality – no one here threatens to snatch the monkey-king crown from Serkis. Partly because their characters lack the urgent oomph that propelled Caesar’s growth in the previous films, but mostly because Ball and Friedman are more interested in the idea of conflict rather than the narrative potential of it. Wild horses, they couldn’t drag this film away.