Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Just a quick review. It's a good film.

James Franco was meh. John Lithgow was good but needed a bit more screen time early on to build a stronger relationship with Caesar. The girlfriend was utterly pointless. The guy at the sanctuary was decent if a little cartoonish. He did get to say the line though, in probably the most surprising movie scene of the year.

SUPER DUPER MEGA SPOILERS.

Spoiler:

Caesar and the various apes were great, although they all seemed slightly too smart to begin with, before any of the super-intelligence stuff. Seeing two apes communicate with sign language was just weird when one of them was supposed to be a regular ape (albeit one who was raised a circus and taught sign language). But maybe they're just that smart anyway, I dunno.

There were a couple very obvious moments of PIS, especially since most of the characters are supposed to be scientists. One guy gets exposed to the experimental treatment, but they apparently run no tests on him at all and even when he starts sneezing blood he doesn't report anything. You kind of don't care though because the humans aren't that interesting anyway. There is a small throwaway plot element that I assume is there for the sequel, which was nicely done. I didn't even think about it until someone mentioned it afterwards.

Anyway, this film has some of the most ridiculous things ever in it and manages to make it work, which is what's great about it. I never thought I would take a gorilla fighting a horse so seriously, but it works. They do scenes that we've seen in dozens of movies, but with apes, and somehow it doesn't come off as laughable.

Don't expect the apes to rule the world (or rule anything for that matter) by the end of the film though. Title is a bit misleading.