Pretty fun and entertaining popcorn movie

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2016)

An emotional ape film about the rise of a chimp named Caesar. It was pretty fun. To the extent that you wouldn't expect to care about apes and the movie makes you side with them over humans, this is a fairly powerful film. Underlying the drama and action are common issues like animal rights, domestication, and controversial ethics with bio-engineering that could have adverse effects on humans and animals, and therefore backfire.
Overall, it's a good movie and I liked the end. Some scenes are really impressive and well done, but others are very cliché. The plot itself is fairly generic: science experiment gone wrong, advanced mutation/evolution in animal, counteractive contagious disease affects humans, animal displays superhuman strength and ability. That was the only major disappointment, all things considered, knowing the kind of movie it was. I thought the plot would be something different, even if only slightly tweaked, compared to other movies with a similar experiment gone wrong origin story.
It's definitely not boring, goes by pretty fast, and was worth the watch. Have fun watching Caesar rise with his ape pals, especially the lovable orangutan and self-sacrificing gorilla savior, and be surprised when emotional apes can get you teary eyed.
6/10