Ok. You've probably seen these little blurbs popping up in movie threads before, but since there is no thread for this movie I'm going to make my own.
So, yeah. Rise of the Planet Of The Apes. Pretty good. I never saw the original, but was familiar with the basic premise, and I understood it fine. Even if you'd never heard of the franchise before, I doubt you would have been confused by it. It was certainly entertaining, and mildly thought-provoking, but certainly no District 9.
- +/2: Good CGI. Very, very good CGI. Not too showy (which I actually like) and hard to discern from reality.
- ++: Good acting on the part of the Dad. That whole plotline just spoke to me for some reason.
- +: Also good acting on the part of the sleazy businessman. Nicely understated, but menacing.
- ++: I caught at least three references to the original PotA, including one outright recursion. I'm sure there were more that I didn't catch...
- +: "NO!"
- -: Sci Guy's girlfriend seemed mostly redundant. What, really, was the point of including her at all?
- -: Without giving away too much of the plot, the surprise ending annoyed me. Or rather, they were foreshadowing the ending all throughout the movie, but I expected them to reverse on that and do a surprise ending, which they didn't do, which surprised me. And annoyed me.
- --: In the same vein, just once I'd like to see a movie where genetic engineering does not usher in armageddon or dystopia..... Technophobes piss. ME. OFF! (Plus, it's quickly becoming a tired and tiring trope.)
- -:And it was supposed to be a bomb!!
There were also a couple of nits. Not enough to get a minus, but too many to get a plus, either:
- The apes in the movie seem to demonstrate unusual physical strength. I know that apes are strong, but ripping up parking meters, tearing down fences and shoving buses around seems a bit much even for creatures with 5X Human strength. What's weird is that this would have been easy to explain- just claim that the gene therapy resulted in increased muscle. But they didn't.
- Similarly, the unenhanced primates seemed to demonstrate a surprising amount of intelligence. I don't think real apes can use complete sentences, even in sign language.
- Lastly, I'm a little unclear how shorting out a cattle prod (which is specifically designed to pack a charge that does NOT kill humanoids), could result in a lethal shock. I don't think they come with more power for use on larger animals, because that would make them too big of a risk for use around humans.
