Planet of the Apes – Memphis Flyer

When French writer Pierre Boulle wrote La Panéte des singes in 1963, it was meant as a wry commentary on human hubris. His most successful book to date was a war story which was adapted by director David Lean as The Bridge on the River Kwai. Boulle, who didn’t speak English, won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1957. His novel, which was translated in the UK as Monkey Planet, became an unexpected hit in England, and was promptly optioned by 20th Century Fox. Boulle thought the book was unfilmable, so he was shocked when Planet of the Apes became a huge hit in 1968. At the Academy Awards that year, Planet of the Apes beat 2001: A Space Odyssey for Best Costume Design. (Legend has it that many Academy voters chose PotA because they thought Kubrick had used real apes in 2001’s “Dawn of Man” sequence.)

The enduring vision of Boulle’s premise has echoed across the decades, with five films and two television series in the 20th century and, beginning with a Tim Burton-directed remake in 2001, for films in this century. In this future world, the humans, who have lost the power of speech and reason, live in captivity and servitude to a society of primates. Gorillas are the warrior class, orangutans are the priestly class, and chimpanzees are scientists.

The last three PotA films, beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, tell the story of how our world got that way. A medical test chimp named Caesar (Andy Serkis) is infected with an experimental virus, designed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, that increases his intelligence. But when the virus escapes from the lab, it has the opposite effect on humans, and a global pandemic ensues which threatens the existence of humanity. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves helmed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, drawing a long and complex portrait of Caesar as a wise leader of his people — uh, apes — while a crippled humanity fights for survival. Reeves evolved a patient, detailed style, which proved to be perfect for this version of PotA, but turned positively turgid when he took on the superhero genre in The Batman.

Wes Ball of Maze Runner fame took over for the latest film, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which picks up the story many generations after the death of Caesar. Noa (Owen Teague) is the son of the chief of Eagle Clan, a group of chimps who live in harmony with nature. When he leads an expedition to gather new falcon eggs to raise in the village aviary, he strays into the forbidden Valley Beyond. When he returns, he is followed by a group of masked gorillas armed with electric lances. Eagle Clan, having never seen electricity before, is quickly overwhelmed by the raiders and kidnapped for parts unknown. Noa escapes and sets out to find his stolen tribe. Along the way, he meets Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan who belongs to The Order of Caesar, a monastic order dedicated to their namesake’s two moral laws: Apes Together Strong, and Ape No Kill Ape. Together, they discover Mae (Freya Allan), a human who, they soon learn, can talk. They track the mysterious raiders until they are ambushed on a bridge and dragged back to an armed camp on the shoreline. There, Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) is trying to break through a huge vault door set in the side of a sea cliff. He believes there is game-changing human technology behind the door, and that Mae knows how to open it.

Kingdom is a much more conventional sci-fi adventure story than Reeves’ meditations on the responsibilities of leadership. Its sweeping vistas of Los Angeles in ruins make for some compelling cinema, and Ball knows how to concoct a good slam-bang action sequence. Unlike the old days of Roddy McDowall emoting behind a thick mask, these apes are all motion-capture CGI creations, which sometimes causes confusion, as Noa’s chimp brethren all kinda look alike. Teague’s Noa makes a serviceable and pleasingly vulnerable hero, but he can’t live up to the masterful mo-cap performance of Andy Serkis. Sure, it’s blander than its predecessors, but taken on its own terms, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes remains a fun summer blockbuster.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
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I poke my head into my wife’s office and ask if she’s still interested in going to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with me. No, sorry. She would, but she’s not as far along with her work as she thought she would be at this point. But it’s okay. I can go on without her.

It’s just an ABBA movie. 114 minutes of ABBA. I can do this.

I arrive at the theater and the pleasant girl behind the counter waves me in. They know me here. I arrive at my seat after the Chevy commercial, but before the trailers are done. Things are looking up! What do I remember about the first one? Meryl Streep’s got a daughter who wants to know who her dad is. Turns out it could be Pierce Brosnan, the handsome rich architect; Colin Firth, the handsome rich banker; or Stellan Skarsgård, the handsome rich sailor. Everybody sings a bunch of ABBA songs and decides nobody cares who the father is because the real father was the friends we made along the way.

The film begins, and I’m reminded that Meryl Streep’s daughter Sophie is played by Amanda Seyfried, whom I believe is secretly a Mark II Emma Stone android. She immediately starts singing ABBA a capella. I take a deep breath and remind myself I’m only here because I couldn’t stomach The Equalizer 2.

Here we go again — more ABBA, more Greece, and more singing in the sequel to Mamma Mia.

Sophie is sending out invites to a grand re-opening of Hotel Bella Donna, and also her mom Donna is dead. Apparently we couldn’t afford Meryl for the 10-years-after sequel.

But what’s this? A flashback to 1979! Donna’s a Dancing Disco queen and also valedictorian. It takes me a minute to figure out the connection, because young Donna is played by Lily James, who doesn’t in any way resemble Meryl. In lieu of a valedictorian speech, Donna sings “When I Kissed the Teacher,” which I have to admit is thematically appropriate. Just so happens that I stumbled across a marathon of Leonard Bernstein’s Omnibus on Turner Classic Movies last night, and watched an episode where the great composer takes a deep dive into the history of American musical comedy. The form originated in the late 1860s when a theater troupe and a minstrel group were both stranded in a town with one theater, so they took turns performing scenes and songs. People ate it up.

The guy who wrote West Side Story would have despised this movie. Bernstein said the key to a good musical is that the songs must advance the plot and illuminate emotions, creating artistic unity. In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, things just kind of happen to provide excuses to sing listlessly. These renditions are so flat and lifeless, they make the original versions sound raw and edgy. Even the subtitle, “Here We Go Again,” sounds drained of energy.

Everyone is very sad that Meryl is dead. I haven’t seen a production scramble to maintain its dignity after a losing its star since Charlton Heston played hardball with the producers of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. But they got the last laugh. He showed up at the end.

Did I mention the Hotel Bella Donna is on an island “at the far end of Greece”? That’s how Young Donna describes it as she sets out from Paris on her postgraduate transcontinental insemination spree. The first guy she meets is Young Colin Firth (Hugh Skinner). You can tell he’s a punk because he shops at Hot Topic in 1979. The Busby Berkeley-inspired production number of “Waterloo” he and Allen perform with a horde of French waiters dressed as Napoleon is pretty much the high point of the picture. Then it’s on to the ocean, where Donna ends up with Young Stellan Skarsgård, (Josh Dylan), on board his yacht The Panty Dropper. At least I think that’s what it’s called. I dozed off for a while. Finally, she meets Young Pierce Brosnan (Jeremy Irvine), and they cohabitate in a rustic farmhouse. In the barn is a powerful black stallion—which is in no way a sexual symbol—that Donna must tame.

The blonde guy’s obviously the father, by the way.

What’s weird is, in the ABBA Universe, the Greek economic crisis of 2009 still happened. And Cher is there, but she looks like Lady Gaga, and is absolutely murdering “Fernando.” Then, just as the film goes full Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it hits me: Donald Trump is not president in the ABBA universe. That’s why everything seems so aggressively pleasant.

This Greek island seems nice. I want to go there.