Monkey business

Director: Rupert Wyatt,
Starring: James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Andy Serkis, Brian Cox

In what is essentially a prequel to the 1968 classic Planet Of The Apes, James Franco plays a genetic scientist working day and night to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Driven on by his ailing father, a former music teacher who’s forgotten how to play the piano, he uses chimpanzees as test subjects and concocts a potential cure that radically improves ape intelligence.

However, when his star creation wreaks havoc on the test facility, all the animals are ordered to be put down – but not before Franco rescues a baby chimp named Caesar and raises him in secret.

After eight years of living as a human, things start to unravel as Caesar learns his true identity, before befriending others of his kind and vowing to take revenge on the humans who created him. This is a hugely entertaining sci-fi thriller that’s both exciting and genuinely moving, thanks to a strong script, flawless special effects work and a typically terrific motion-capture lead performance from Andy Serkis, the actor who brought Gollum to life in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

A real feel-good flick, which proves that primates are people, too!

Genre: Action | Drama | Sci-Fi
Age Restriction: PG-13
Runtime: 105 min