Monkey Movies for the Young and Unemployed

There we were on West 34th Street, and what we needed was a miracle.

Something about these franchise movies that are very difficult to sit through. They are made for kids to like and for adults who are kind of like kids. John Lithgow, the dad, has dementia. James Franco is looking for a cure. Instead, he, you know, oh I can’t even type it. (James Franco better lay off the bananas if he wants to keep his jaw line and me.) The movie was not visually great. It looked like a game. The digital apes looked like digital apes.

The story, well---you know, it was a prequel. And prequels have their troubles. Slow. You know where it’s heading. So why sit through the whole thing?

I guess this---I guess you just have to like “other worlds” and you have to not care about the story---you’re just so happy to be out of your dull or unhappy life and in the lives of something else. You don’t have a job, but you can afford a movie ticket and you’ll take what they throw at you because you need escape.

Besides the horrendous use of hackneyed dialog and the misuse of the poor girlfriend actress from Slumdog Millionaire (and I won’t even look up her name---because, you see, by doing this movie she has completely disappeared)--—there was this general cut and paste from all movies ever made. I guess there are only so many ways you can make a chimp rise up.

But I liked something very much. The smart Caesar, future leader of all ape-kind, had morals and integrity. He did not like greed, aggression, stupidity and being locked in a cage. He wanted to be free, in nature. So, something about getting back to the arboreal was what this was all about. The natural state. Less glory, more balance. Nice.

But friends…I was bored. If I were James Franco, I would have taken the gig. It’s going to be a lot of movies for a lot of money. Then, he can do what he really wants---live with me in a little castle off the coast of Spain, like a couple of hairless primates doing what comes naturally.