Flimsy script, stock characters and ape CGI galore

Rating: 3/10 (3 October 2011)

I am surprised Rise of the Planet of the Apes raised so much excitement for so many viewers. Maybe it looks original or fashionable nowadays to have a hero from a dominated species confronting our economically violent human world. Like Avatar, this would be Disney with a (not too profound) message.
As for the movie itself, it's genuinely boring.
James Franco plays the perfectly bland cutesy but single (living home with daddy) scientist with a conscience. Experiments going bad because of greedy research corporations is nothing new, it has been done nicely umpteen times, and this time it's only a basic setting with no substance.
Apes are good, OK, but not when they are shown a-moving around in the air, across trees or buildings: movements are linear (something know as the conveyor-belt effect for CGI-enhanced elements moving on ground level), there is simply not the right amount of acceleration. Now the most interesting part of the whole movie is in the refuge, but even then the storyline is far from good. Intercuting with James Franco's nice boy's life prevents the tension from building up, and anyway the refuge wardens are such worn-out stock characters that it cheapens the whole sequence.
Icebox logic last: when a film is that bad, you're bound to have the time to think how stupid the whole story is. I can take the premise that a drug will help brain-cells regenerate and that apes can thus become as intelligent as humans in the blink of an eye. Scientifically this is stupid, but when you go to the movies there is the famed suspension of disbelief which the viewer offers to the movie-makers and it works when the movie do delivers. Now I wrote about clichés, yet they can be funny, if only the movie doesn't aim to be dead-serious (or doesn't take funny for granted in a spoof). But the story of Rise of the Planets of the Apes really goes nowhere. In the end the staging of the great battle Apes Vs. Humans is ridiculous. There is no sense of immediacy, so it feels dumb that only a dozen cops and one chopper confront the Apes hours after they stormed the city (yes they do take the time to visit SF, they're not just moving rapidly to leave the city).
The screenwriter here certainly didn't get brain-enhancing drugs. This movie is much less interesting than Conquest of the Planet of the Apes which was already a low-budget mediocre prequel-sequel. But the script somewhat helped to forget most of the movie took place with actors-dressed-as-apes walking on a concrete 70s plaza, whereas here the big budget, good and bad CGI, only makes the flimsy script hurting more