Alicia I love this movie so much

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

paulclaassen Oh, wow, the best in the series so far! The visual effects are ground-breaking! The story is good, the acting is believable, and the music is great. All round an incredible production! The film also deals with so many emotions and real-life dramatic elements, all combined into an amazing film.

DylanW After an outbreak of Simian Flu, a virus activated after humans experimented on apes, Caesar (Andy Serkis), a house-raised ape, inherits extraordinary mental power, propelling him to new heights which seem to be capable of reaching humans'. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is an emotional and dramatic prequel to the original "Planet of the Apes" (1968). The performance made by Andy Serkis lifts the movie, and although his face cannot be seen, his emotions can be read.

MSB Reviews This is a great start to another (and hopefully the last) reboot of a well-known franchise, Planet of the Apes. It's easy to say what definitely stands out: the visual effects. All of the CGI apes are incredibly realistic, especially Caesar (Andy Serkis) who is a terrific masterpiece, not only visually, but as a character as well. He's surprisingly the protagonist of the movie, a decision that I congratulate the director and production team for, because it transformed it into a much more captivating and interesting film.Andy Serkis is the God of motion capture, it's amazing the amount of emotion he's able to transmit as a guy in a spandex suit full of white dots on his face. Caesar is one of the most fantastic and intriguing characters I've ever watched and the fact that there's almost no dialogue throughout the film just proves that you can achieve great things with pure emotion (and some sign language ... ).James Franco is good portraying an also well-developed character, even if he wasn't as great as he could be. The script is very smart and emotional (mainly due to the extremely well-directed no-dialogue scenes) and the action is super awesome, particularly because of its emotional side. The fact that we actually care about the apes (maybe even more than the humans) elevates the action-heavy third act and brings the movie home (no pun intended), with a very strong ending.In spite of all this, it's still not a perfect film. Even if the runtime isn't properly long, the film's pacing (principally the second act) is really slow, which drags the movie into almost a boring state. As I said above, the story is captivating, but only when we're with Caesar and his respective families ... All of the human drama inside the Gen-Sys Laboratories isn't really interesting, but we still get too much of it.Finally, the side characters. Besides Caesar, Will and his father (brilliantly portrayed by John Lithgow), no one else got the chance to shine on the big screen. Most of them are plot devices in order to get the story going and actually have a film: the "bad guys" are just bad because ... Well, they're assholes, I guess they were born that way ... I would have preferred that they spent a little more time with those characters instead of the company's dramas.All in all, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an excellent start to this reboot that proves we don't need dialogue to transmit a great amount of emotion. The CGI is flawless, Caesar being the huge proof of what a masterpiece looks like, visually and character-wise. A slow pace and some under-developed side characters bring the movie down a bit, but the captivating and emotional story, plus a very well-directed action-heavy third act, elevate the film into one of the best in the whole franchise.MSB Reviews - If you like my reviews, please follow my blog :)

magnusmax Rise of the Planet of the Apes has become for me an ideal example of fresh, thrilling, spellbinding, emotive, overall perfect cinema. I love this movie, because it is all these things and more. The trailblazing motion- capture, used to artfully capture Andy Serkis' Oscar-worthy performance, laughs (I apologize in advance to the fans of the original franchise) Charlton Heston's 1960's series to shame; Patrick Doyle's score is simple, yet delightful; the pacing is perfect, and the actors well-chosen and talented. This review could well prove painful to me, owing not to any fault of the film in question, but rather to the possibly necessary restraint from droning on interminably to its deserved credit.In most motion pictures, I would judge any which run below, let's say, 100 minutes, as likely lacking the material needed to produce a fully matured movie, and most of the time I would be correct in so doing. Here is evidenced an exception to the rule. At only 104 minutes of running time, that which I would tend to view as a fault is indeed a virtue in this case. The reason for the shorter-than-average blockbuster length is because the story pleading telling requires only that amount of time. Packed jam-full into those 104 minutes is a fantastic adventure, complete with thrills, sorrows, and everything in between. The pacing is beautiful - the film constantly moving along its well-planned trajectory, never feeling either hurried or stalled. It maintains continual interest as every event unfolds. I digress momentarily to add that, without becoming merely a "rung in the ladder", the story, begun so praise worthily in this first installment, maintains its flow as the franchise progresses. In an age in which ideas are forever recycled and served up as sequels with a slightly new flavour to audiences again and again, original series that manage to tell authentic stories should be warmly welcomed. But to return to the topic at hand. The plot is largely believable and convincing, although admittedly the climax pushes credibility, somewhat.Despite a slightly obscure cast, the characters are well-formed and well-played, presenting convincing and realistic performances. Motion capture master Andy Serkis is naturally the champion that holds up the entire premise. Here, in ape realm, Serkis is king. His unmatched emotive talent seems to be perfectly at home as Caesar, and though he has delivered an array of indisputably singular performances as Gollum, Captain Haddock, King Kong and more, Caesar remains my personal favourite and, in my mind, his most organically, authentically, self- made trademark personality. As mentioned, the characters are developed nicely, and I appreciate the practicality the writers employed when they wove the players into the story, not as absolute centrepieces, but well-ordered parts of a whole - clever appendages to the events that shaped the lives of many. One of the beautiful aspects to these movies is the way in which characters and the plot are balanced - so that you really feel for the heroes on an intimate level, while never abandoning the continuous course of history.Visual effects are obviously crucial to the movie's success, and here they used brilliantly. Unlike most blockbusters, which routinely follow formulas that involve a load of explosions and similar eye-candy, to Weta's credit (and to the credit of VFX in general) Rise of the Planet of the Apes uses them to provide a unique medium - one that replaces humans with apes, and, ridiculous as it will sound to someone new to the concept, it works really, really well. Since 2011, mo-cap has improved noticeably, and supposedly it will continue to do so. Still, visually it is very pleasing, and story-wise it excels. I think animation is a praise-worthy mode of story- telling, and the method by which it is here blended so it meshes perfectly with live-action is a joy to behold.When Rise of the Planet of the Apes hit cinemas in 2011, nobody was expecting the successful reboot that followed, and though it received strong critical reviews, audiences never showed the support I believe it deserved. Over the years, it has risen in true-ape style to enter the highest ranks of my all-time favourite films. The serious pitch and good continuity are maintained as the trilogy progresses. It has many great moments; I can hardly recommend it enough. If you have yet to see this movie, don't waste any more time - see it right away!