Your complete appreciation of the entertaining new Planet of the Apes prequel could hinge on your comfort with CGI in close-up. I was never sold on the motion-capture rendering of actor Andy Serkis as the primary primate, Caesar. Roddy McDowell in a rubber mask from 43 years ago—or even Tim Roth in Tim Burton’s Ape reboot—is still more engaging than this cold-eyed, if emotive, animation. That said, the San Francisco-set Rise—about an ambitious scientist (the indefatigable James Franco) whose experiments on chimps to cure Alzheimer’s disease go awry—has enough pulpy storytelling juice to keep you distracted, with a spectacular final act simian-rampage payoff. And that’s done in medium and wide shots, where the computer-generated super-intelligent apes totally convince (especially the gorillas, wow). If a prequel sequel ever gets made, more mayhem of that sort, please.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2011.