Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2011)

When I was a kid, they'd often do "Planet of the Apes" week on TV, showing all five of the original movies. I know I watched them all at least once, probably twice, but except for a few of the iconic moments from the first movie, it's all lost in a memory fog (I skipped the Burton remake, and by all accounts, that was a smart move). That's neither here nor there, since this film doesn't seem to do anything to connect itself to the original series, with the exception of the "damn dirty ape" line (which is horribly shoehorned in, but whatever). I had expectations that the movie would be mostly apes tearing sh*t up, and even kind of hoped for that. But surprisingly, very little of it could be considered an action film. I would say the bulk of it is an interesting spin on the prison movie genre. These are the best parts of the picture (okay, the tearing sh*t up is pretty cool too), watching Caesar's intelligence and rebellion develop. The rest of it is rather meh. James Franco continues his streak of being an entirely uninteresting performer, and the whole bit with John Lithgow's Alzheimer's isn't pulled off very well. Basically, everything not directly involved with Caesar and the other apes is quite obvious, clichéd, predictable.
The CG is oddly inconsistent. The animators seemed to have a tough time with "young" Caesar, and for the first half hour of the movie he looks like crap. But after that the animation gets pretty damn good, to the point where you forget you're watching CG. I also thought the score was a little overdone at times. In general, though, the film is better than expected yet not as good as I'd hoped for. I'm wavering between "Fair" and "Good"... since nothing about it is horrendously bad or anything, I'll give it a leg up.