Reviews & Ratings for
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Recapping the Ape Movies. First up.
Rise of planet of the apes

Released in 2011, I had exactly ZERO expectation when this movie was announced and finally released. But I was surprised at how good this film was and how non cheesy its Ape-centric plot was.

Recap:
Obvious Spoilers Ahead…
The story starts with a female ape being caught in the wild and then being tested upon. The drug ALZ-112 is given to this ape. She becomes smarter and our leading man, james franco is very enthusiastic about the drug he developed, as he thinks he might be able to cure his father’s Alzheimer’s with it.
But chaos ensues and this ape is killed. Later it comes to light that she gave birth. This small chimp is adopted by franco’s character and is genetically smarter and almost human like in intelligence and behavior.
The plot unfolds and Caesar the ape sees the cruelty of humans and the suffering of apes and decides to do something about it.
This all culminates in Caesar releasing a new experimental drug ALZ 113 which is (unknown to him or the ones who created it) deadly to humans but makes the ape smarter and able to speak in human tongues.
Caesar and his apes then proceed to rampage across the city in search for a safe heaven, which results in some great action scenes with gorillas charging horses and jumping on to choppers.

Review:
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Especially in the sci-fi / drama genre. Caesar’s story is a coming of age story along with an allegory of slavery and meaning of freedom. The direction is top notch, with the audience immediately feeling a connection with the lead chimp. In 2011 the Visual FX were ground breaking in creating a fully CGI chimp which was more or less real looking.
Even 2017’s beauty and the beast had worse VFX than this movie.
The music, the atmosphere is all engaging as well as emotional.
The only sore point of this film is female lead. Played by Freda Pinto she is sorely miscast and an eye sore in the acting department. Luckily though, she doesn’t have a big role.
IF you haven’t seen this film in fear of too much monkeying around, worry not. This film treats its ape subject matter very seriously and makes you, the viewer feel for the ape’s plight.

Rating:
9/10. A more or less perfect Reboot/Remake/Prequel in the apes franchise and a total surprise when it released due to high quality CGI and great direction.