Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

James Franco is all grown up now and helming his own movies. No more stoner sidekick roles for him, right? Who are we kidding. Anyway, in this prequel to Funky Wahlberg’s 2001 Planet of the Apes effort, which basically resulted in a critics poo-throwing contest, here we are again trying to figure out how the world was overrun with primates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_gKq200EBk&feature=player_embedded

Franco, looking quite the studious scientist, manages to exude the dynamically subtle nuances most attributed to plywood. I’m not getting the urgency, Franco. Murderous apes are afoot! When Matthew Broderick discovered monkey-mayhem had occurred in Project X there was fleet-footed frantic scrambling to round up all those monkeys! These people just look like the vending machines are all out of Certs. Maybe it gets more intense further along. We’ll see. However, one thing is clear, the apes, yeah, they want your face…on a plate. We should probably apologize for Donkey Kong.

Abduction

Taylor Lautner, abs connoisseur and full-moon transforming Pekinese, has put on a shirt and decided to try some acting that doesn’t involve supernatural love triangles, or being humped weirdly by Taylor Swift in a high school gym uniform. We want to root for him, don’t we?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW1v4zJ4fXU

Abduction looks more than a bit like 1988’s Little Nikita starring the late great River Phoenix, but with some updates. iPad! In this we see Lautner using some high kicking Kung Fu! Very Keanu of you, sir. Are you The One? The one in a too tight t-shirt, maybe? While it looks like the story may get a little muddled and fall into the “secret organization super-spy baddies want teenager because he’s really a sleeper operative” trope, this probably isn’t the worst move for Lautner. He’s the lead actor. He is, however, obviously reciting his lines in his head. We see the effort. Not good. And oh, look! There’s Maria Bello! And wait, Sigourney Weaver! Sigh.

What do you think? Worth the movie bucks and highway robbery popcorn?