Essentially just another blockbuster with impressive effects

Rating: 6/10 (20 July 2014)

A film such as this – essentially another summer blockbuster – must be taken on its own terms and on those terms is is rather impressive. But please ignore all claims along the lines that this film 'examines our relationship with blah-blah' or any other such blarney. Lined up against other blockbusters Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes stands tall, mainly, of course, because of its impressive CGI effects. Judged on other criteria, though, it is pretty much standard hokum. Still, go along and enjoy it, but don't read too much into it. There is precious little characterisation, hardly any 'plot' or story and the characters are, at best, two-dimensional, with the standard bad guys and the standard rather misunderstood good guys. But on its own terms it does the biz and then some. Someone else reviewing it here has described it as a 'masterpiece'. Not quite, and don't fall for it. Great popcorn-munching fodder but not much else.