Movie - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Well it’s about time, I get to live with the apes!Well for a couple of hours in celluloid form anyway. But as anyone who knows me knows, I’d be very happy indeed to share this planet with the apes.After all, it’s humans that cause the wars and troubles, the apes are happily living and maintaining the forests and we insist on ruining it all. So yes, I am with Caesar and his pal Maurice who has a larger role to play this time. Having been raised in a San Francisco house, Caesar is now the main ape, living in the forest with all of his kind. The humans – or so they thought, had been pretty much wiped out after downturns, unrest and a virus but they keep a look out for them.It’s only when a few humans arrive on their patch to fix a dam to give them the power that they are desperately running out of, that they realise they are still sharing the planet with the apes. With no internet, there is little communication between the enclaves of humans around the world. They didn’t realise the apes had settled in such large numbers – and varieties – up in the forest looking down to the city. So will they be able to negotiate to get their electricity back or will they go to war? The touching moments are the baby ape, Caesar’s son who he amazingly has with the mother of his first child. This is just one of the many human traits that he has kept from his upbringing. The other being the ability to talk and teach all the apes to do the same. Mainly, they use sign language which I had joy of learning while watching this.There’s the point when a human doctor is allowed to help his wife recover from an illness post birth. I also love it when Caesar finds the house he grew up in, abandoned in the war but still with photos of him inside.There is a hiccup in the film; there is a horrid point when a senior ape has gone crazy, which is slightly understandable given the amount of experiments humans did on him. He is now, however, power-hungry to get his revenge and kills a young ape just to make an example of him, after he defies him his demand for the youngster to kill an unarmed human. This is against what Caesar is all about; he doesn’t see humans as the automatic enemy, only if they do wrong. I love all his human traits and all is intelligent ape behaviour. Caesar is the best of both worlds, but he still rules!  8½/10Smile factor 9/10