- Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Release Date: Aug 5, 2011
- Critic Score
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100As both a simian simile and a wonder of technology, Rise of the Planet of the Apes deserves to be in the company of the great original "Kong." This year's sixth "origins" story of a fantasy franchise (after The Green Hornet, Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger) is also the year's finest action movie.
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100This summer's best popcorn flick.
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90Smart, fun and thoroughly enjoyable, it's a model summer diversion that entertains without insulting your intelligence.
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90Judged, though, as the action extravaganza it means to be, Rise of the Planet of the Apes wins high marks for originality, and takes top honors for spectacle.
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88Audacious, violent and disquieting, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a summer sequel that's better than it has any right to be.
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83It's the rest of the movie, especially a grin-inducing final third, which makes "Apes" rise above the level of a typical sci-fi rehash.
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80By far the best spectacle movie of the season, and one of the few films to use digital technology for nuanced dramatic effect.
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80A worthy, exciting, emotional addition to the venerable monkey movie marathon. Apes will rise. Sequels are likely.
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80As tight as the parallel homo sapiens storylines are lax, Caesar's prison conversion to charismatic pan-ape revolutionist is near-silent filmmaking, with simple and precise images illustrating Caesar's General-like divining of personalities and his organization of a group from chaos to order. All of this is shown in absorbing, propulsive style, as Caesar broodingly bides his time like a king in disguise awaiting restoration.
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80Whereas the original was a work of speculative science fiction - a chin-stroking fable about evolution in the nuclear age - this revisiting of the Planet of the Apes myth is an animal-rights manifesto disguised as a prison-break movie.
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80Strong action, special effects and by far the most credible ape "performances" yet seen will spell box office to inspire chest-thumping in all markets.
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75It's faint praise to say that this is the best of the "Planet of the Apes" movies, because the evolution of special effects and makeup was predictable. But the unexpected strength of the film is its heart.
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75The running time is efficient, the direction is clean, the story is simple but resonant, the effects are understated yet impressive, and the near-wordless star of the show puts on an acting clinic. Damned if the risen one doesn't lift us out of our seats.
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75The cautionary tale feels surprisingly fresh and entertaining, given that this is the fifth "Planet of the Apes" film since the 1968 original.
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75The movie rises and, at times, even soars. This is all - and I do mean all - thanks to what human actors in league with computer technology can now achieve to bring the apes to life. No more guys squeezed into monkey suits and talking in posh accents. Performance-capture makes all the difference.
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75A shamelessly fun B-movie with A-movie effects.
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75Rise is very consciously a drama about a Simian Spring, and it's close enough in its details to a recent documentary to be thought of as "Project Nim: The Revenge."
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75While it's effects-heavy, the movie itself does not feel heavy. Consider it a fanciful extension of the recent and very fine documentary "Project Nim."
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75Wyatt brings a light touch to the potentially grim material - too light when it drops in some groan-inducing references to the original film - but he keeps the action compelling whether focusing on apes as they run amok or as they quietly contemplate their next move.
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75The movie has its pleasures, although human intelligence is not one of them. Caesar, to begin with, is a wonderfully executed character, a product of special effects and a motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis, who earlier gave us Gollum in "Lord of the Rings."
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70It's good, canny-dumb fun.
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Aug 4, 201170Compared to this summer's grab bag of superheros vying for a franchise, the apes rise (pardon the pun) to the challenge of making us care.
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70I kind of enjoyed Rise of the Planet of the Apes despite its evident silliness and the fact that nobody's likely to remember it three weeks from now.
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Aug 3, 201170Thanks to stunning advances in performance capture technology, director Rupert Wyatt successfully ditches the cumbersome makeup appliances of past chapters, building the story around a cast of photoreal CG simians convincing enough to identify with as characters, rather than just special effects.
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70Once you see that ape, named Caesar, riding a galloping horse in triumph, it's awfully hard not to get sucked in. It's not dumb fun, exactly. It's smart dumb fun.
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67The movie is zippier than Tim Burton's oddly lifeless 2001 "Planet of the Apes" remake, but unlike good sci-fi, it doesn't signify anything, or really even try to.
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63The central problem with Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that it feels more like a piece of something larger than a complete motion picture.
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Aug 6, 201160To showcase the special effects, the filmmakers reportedly trimmed many of the dialogue-based scenes, thereby dulling the dramatic impact of a strong genre premise.
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60The middle section of the story is where Rise truly takes off, perhaps in ways that will have viewers forgiving the rest.
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60Evincing more visible intelligence than any of his human co-stars aside from Lithgow, Caesar is disquietingly lifelike.
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58Feels like half of a good movie, much of it revealed in admittedly thrilling trailers.
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50They probably should have called it "Beneath the Dignity of the Planet of the Apes," but Rise of the Planet of the Apes is tolerable if you'll just keep in mind that the original feature was an overachieving B-movie.
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50It is not what could be fairly called a bad movie, but neither is it fine enough to be a good one, with its lineup of dull characters and a limp story that functions like a conveyor belt.
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50Now for the bad news. The filmmakers seem to have spent so much attention and, presumably, money on getting the primates right that they completely forgot about the people.
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50Like the film that constrains him, a prequel to Planet of the Apes, perhaps James Franco understands his performance as something that will one day evolve into something far greater.
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50James Franco looks more bored and distracted in Rise of the Planet of the Apes than he did when he was hosting the Oscars: Watching the movie, I kept waiting for him to pull out his iPhone, aim it at the camera and take a snapshot while mugging sheepishly. Has there ever been a film with a less engaged protagonist?
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45Too earnest and dour to be a silly bit of summer fun, but it's not exactly scientifically sound, either.
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42Since the only really good "Planet of the Apes" movie was the 1968 original with Charlton Heston, I've always wondered why filmmakers can't just leave well enough alone.
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40Hell, even Heston's performance elicited cheers back in the day. Franco, in a totally, tonally different role, but still the prime human here, is a pale shadow of the ruined future to come.