Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Get your stinkin paws on a copy of this movie!

Dr. Will Rodman is attempting to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. One of the chimpanzees who is exposed to the drug shows an incredible amount of human - like intelligence and emotion, so Will raises him like he was his own child. He is named Cesar and he lives peacefully with Will until he is taken from him and sent to an ape sanctuary. It is there that he is exposed to the inhumane treatment his fellow primates receive, so he formulates a plan to not only help them all escape, but rise up against their human captors.

Prequels are never easy to make (just ask George Lucas). A prequel not only has to acknowledge and pay homage to the original film, but also present its own compelling story to fall in line with that of the original. The original Planet of the Apes (not the 2001 remake by Tim Burton, which was a mistake on a number of levels) carved out a niche for itself as a sci-fi classic, as well as creating a loyal fan base, due to its imaginative story - telling, an extremely quotable leading man in Charlton Heston (even if you have not seen the movie, you are no doubt aware of lines such as "take your stinking paws off me you damn, dirty ape") and ground-breaking makeup effects which made the talking apes believable. This meant that director Rupert Wyatt, James Franco and the rest of the cast and crew of "Rise" had quite a task in front of them but thankfully, for fans and regular film - goers, they were more than ready and created a film that not only does right by the original Planet of the Apes but holds its own.

The story revolved around how Will was trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's (a disease that was afflicting his father Charles). To that end, he experimented on chimpanzees, one of which (with a name that fans of the series will recognize) has a child that Will adopts and raises as his own after she dies. If handled incorrectly, this story could have devolved into a cliched summer action film which would have concentrated more on the destruction and chaos caused by the primates as opposed to the intelligent and thought - provoking film it was. Wyatt took the time to build the story, as well as the characters, allowing the audience the chance to get to know Cesar and empathize with him as he faced emotionally situations. It also helped that the gentleman playing Cesar (Andy Serkis) was able to provide so much emotion in his performance. Serkis is the same guy who breathed life into Gollum and King Kong but this performance has to be considered his finest. Add to that the spectacular finale, which featured the primates ripping up downtown San Francisco as well as the Golden Gate Bridge, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes turned out to be one of those rare prequels that came close to topping the original.

Grade: B+

Spaceballs: May the Schwartz be with you!

Parody, when it is done right, it can not only pay homage to the subjects it is parodying but also take on an existence of its own, becoming something more than a series of bad one - liners and pratfalls. When done badly,...well you get most of the Scary Movie sequels or any of the most recent parodies done by the guys who wrote the Scary Movie sequels. Leave it to comic legend Mel Brooks to deliver a parody that hits the mark.

When Princess Vespa is captured by Dark Helmet it’s up to Captain Lone Starr and his sidekick Barf to save her. But after they rescue her they must evade capture by traveling, (actually crash landing on) to a distant planet where they encounter a mystical being named Yogurt who teaches Lone Starr about the ways of the “Schwartz” so he can defeat Dark Helmet.

The film not only excelled in parading Star Wars but other science fiction movies like Star Trek, Alien, Planet of the Apes, and others. Fans of the aforementioned Star Wars films easily distinguished which characters in the film were lampooning those of the beloved trilogy. There were numerous scenes which made laughing quite easy including Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis at quite possibly his funniest) playing with toys of himself and other characters of the film, a cross-eyed gunner on the Spaceball ship doing his best to fire a warning shot, and Yogurt revealing how “merchandising” was where the real money of the movie was made (damn you George Lucas, you're the one that forced me to spend all my allowance money upon action figures and other assorted pieces of plastic!). From sight gags like jamming the radar with a really big jar of jam to the use of an instant VCR tape to discover where the heroes escaped the jokes came at lightspeed (yes, I wrote that, it was cheesy but hey, it's six in the morning, what are you going to do?) and left the audience begging for more. It's true that if a person was not a fan of the science fiction films lampooned in Spaceballs, they might not have caught some of the jokes. But Spaceballs the movie is something everyone can enjoy.

Grade: B