★★★
I don’t get all the fuss about this film. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a good, by-the-numbers, sci-fi/action movie that is all plot-driven. Characters are stereotypes, and the action goes exactly where you expect it to go. The acting is wooden (as you would expect), and the filmmaking itself mostly unexciting but for a few images of things like those of apes jumping though plate glass windows from the inside out or them surrounding the evil business manager in an amphitheater-shaped atrium.
There was some talk about Andy Serkis’ performance in the motion-capture generated imagery, but I didn’t find his acting compelling either, perhaps because nothing else in the film is. He definitely doesn’t carry it the way, say, Dustin Hoffman does Elephant Man, a performance I've heard Serkis' compared to. In fact, I found Serkis’ performance to be closer to pantomime than acting.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is good, fun, well-done escapism with many sentimental tones. And that’s enough to warrant watching it without laying on unjustified acclaim.
