Things I loved about Rise of The Planet of the Apes:
1. Andy Serkis - the man is the Laurence Oliver of motion capture. He invests humanity into every character he's asked to bring to life. Which is more than I can say for James Franco in this movie.
2. The CGI effects. The apes are beautiful and realistic. If only that effort had gone into the dialogue.
3. The set-up. A great approach explaining how the apes got so smart, so fast.
4. John Lithgow - A wonderful performance.
5. Caesar's face. They gave that chimp Roddy McDowall's Planet of the Apes face - only more animated.
6. Nods to the classic films. Plenty of them. The most enjoyable part of the movie is looking for them and there was one that (although I saw it coming ten miles away) made me hoot and holler.
What I hated:
1. The dialogue was stilted and hard to sit through. Unworthy of the caliber of the cast. It's as if the director gave them the same direction George Lucas did the cast of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - "Act like a block of wood! More wooden! More wooden!" Convey emotion by shouting! Shout! Shout!
2. The cardboard villains. If you've got good actors to play your bad guys, why waste them? The antagonists are unnecessarily one-dimensional. What a waste of David Hewlett, Tom Felton &David Oyelowo.
3. The evil drug company plot. It's been done and it's cartoonish in this movie. I'm not even sure why it's necessary as the experiment could have gone wrong either way. I find Hollywood's holier-than-thou attitude towards other forms of big business hypocritical. Apparently showbiz is the only biz that should be for profit. Despite that fact that they've never developed a life-saving drug or put a gallon of fuel in a vehicle.
4. James Franco. I know the man can act, I've seen it. But not in this movie.
5. The complete lack of a sense of humor. It's just not any damn fun.
All I can say (paraphrasing Tom Felton in one of the movie's few flashes of humor) is "Give me back my ticket money, you damned dirty apes!
On the other hand, my husband LOVED this movie. His effusive praise will be posted shortly.
