To me, this movie is perfection.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sorry for the corny title... but I couldn't think of anything better! Being a James Franco fan, I naturally wanted to rent The Ape, even though it didn't look like a promising film from what people said. My friends and I settled in to watch it having NO idea what to expect. In the beginning, the movie made us laugh. James Franco's response to the ape was hilarious; the ape itself is just amusing to look at.As the movie progressed, I began to tire of the film though. The ape was incredibly foul-mouthed and I hated to watch the main character, Harry Walker, slowly ruin his life thanks to the influences of the crass primate. There were still scenes that made me laugh, but Franco's acting weakened a bit, especially when he was upset with his wife and boss.Yet the ending of this movie redeemed it for the most part. I was expecting a campy ending in which the ape removes his clearly obvious mask and he and Harry Walker go their separate ways. Instead the ending was dramatic and poignant, really making me reevaluate the movie on the whole. The entire movie was symbolic of a typical man's downfall.Despite the bad language and, at some points, weak acting, I enjoyed this absurd and surreal movie on many levels.

As a film school graduate, I've seen my share of terrible films. Being a fan of James Franco's, I felt that The Ape would at least be interesting. Instead, I was tricked into watching a pretentious James Franco ego-trip. The only good part of the film was its music, which wasn't featured enough. Otherwise, this film was slowly paced, overly perverse, wordy, misdirected, miscast and wildly unclever. I hate bashing somebody's hard work, but if I were to sugar-coat my feelings, somebody might make the same mistake that I made by watching The Ape.The next time James Franco has this much time on his hands, I suggest he take up treasure hunting, or anything else that doesn't involve writing or directing.

I've just had the opportunity to view this movie and on the whole enjoyed it. I have been an avid reader of Dostoevsky for many years but possibly missed the point of the frequent references, was there a particular story that this was based around. Dostoevsky wrote a lot of his work purely to make money and often had to drag the stories out. One of the greatest works I have ever read is 'Crime and Punishment' but very obviously drawn out to produce more entries in the serialised newspaper edition and thus more payments for the author. Back to the movie though I have to say that I laughed out loud on a number of occasions and could see some elements of my own life too, reflected to some extent anyway, in the circumstances of the main character. Summing up I found it an amusing and often succinct story although not suited to all tastes.

I am so sorry, but James Franco should start looking for a career in renting movies for people rather than making them. The plot was awful, but not as bad as the acting. SPOILER ALERT: The "Ape" was actually a guy in a really BAD gorilla mask, although I have to admit I did get a pretty good laugh every time the Ape sat next to a lamp or a wall and turned his head so you could see the empty eye sockets. Even better was the mouth of the mask that just gaped open and was hanging at an angle to one side. It looked like the Ape mask was recovering from a stroke. I had a field-day with this movie picking out all the mistaken cameramen caught in a reflection or the cameraman going through the DT's. Which reminds me, was this James Franco's "acting" or was he just constantly high. I wonder what their budget was for the wardrobe, the apartment, office area, and props like fake feces or extra gorilla hair ????? I guess the budget couldn't afford a tripod. My theory is this movie is so deep it's gonna take me awhile to GET IT....... I think.