Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the new prequel/reboot to the classic 60s/70s franchise, is the most superfluous movie I’ve seen this summer. There are no surprises, nothing shocking and no reason to care about the movie after the closing credits. But it’s fun while it lasts. The tale of Caesar, the first super-intelligent chimp, is an enjoyable tale as he goes from baby to revolutionary. And the CGI is fantastic. At no point do the entirely computer-generated apes look cartoony or fake.

You really root for the apes as they wage apocalyptic war against all of humanity.

He knows what you did

Quite honestly, this is the apes’ movie. There is a human story, starring James Franco, John Lithgow and hottie Freida Pinto, but that’s just so much filler that it doesn’t matter. Franco’s a scientist who’s developed a cure for Alzheimer’s, and this is the wonder drug that makes chimps smart. Caesar is the son of one of the test chimps, so he’s born with the drug in his genes. Franco raises Caesar in secret alongside his Alzheimer’s-inflicted father, who is cured by the drug.

Eventually Caesar goes through his grumpy teenage years, and one bad incident gets him taken away from Franco and locked up in a primate reserve. The pricks working at the reserve treat Caesar like shit, which prompts him to start rallying the rest of the apes to the cause of freedom. There’s also an orangutan who knows the same chimp sign language, and he and Caesar chat about stuff, like the circus and how apes are actually kind of stupid. So Caesar breaks out, steals some of Franco’s upgraded Cure 2.0 and uses it to make the reserve apes super smart as well. And Caesar becomes even smarter. So smart that he challenges the prick humans to a fight…and that’s just the beginning.

Soon he has a whole army of super smart apes and they tear San Francisco a new one.

Viva la revolution!

The Alzheimer’s cure stuff with James Franco is just a means to an end. He has a girlfriend and a boss, as well as some extraneous co-workers, but they’re only ever half-developed and uninteresting. Only Franco serves any real purpose, and that’s only as an emotional foil for Caesar. Once Caesar becomes leader of the ape resistance movement, the film keeps teasing us with the only emotional moment it has left: Franco confronting his out-of-control ‘son’. That pay-off is fun, but so open-ended as to be anti-climactic. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say this movie doesn’t end so much as just dramatically stop.

The humans, they do nothing!

But forget all of that. The reason to see this movie is the reason they made this movie: awesome ape-tastic action. Andy Serkis, the guy who did motion-capture for both Gollum and King Kong, is back as Caesar and he does a fantastic job! As I said before, the CGI is brilliant. You can really see the intelligence in Caesar’s eyes. He can’t talk, so all of his plotting and planning is conveyed through the body language of his eyes. It’s at times adorable, and at other times it’s chilling. But you never hate or dislike Caesar. He’s the hero of this movie, and every chilling glance from his calculating eyes is exciting. The pricks at the primate reserve really are bastards, and the clever ways that Caesar plots against them are fun to watch.

When he finally does get his revenge on the pricks, it’s the most exciting moment in the film.

Then it builds to even more excitement as the super smart apes get out and go on a rampage through the streets of San Francisco. They free the other test chimps at Franco’s lab, as well as the chimps at the zoo. They build their army and basically cause a lot of mayhem. The cops and other agencies are too slow to react, so the apes get their victories. It all builds to an impressive battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. One has to ask how the apes would defeat humans that have machine guns and SWAT gear; well the apes do it with style!

But not with this much style

I never saw the original Planet of the Apes movies, so I have no idea if this film ‘fits’ with the franchise ‘continuity’. It definitely ignores Tim Burton’s 2001 reboot (which I did see). But you don’t need to know anything about those films to enjoy this one. I’d like to think that a lot of the basics about the original Planet of the Apes are well known to society, and knowing some of those details let you appreciate the various Easter Eggs thrown into this film. Though when they get around to saying the famous, ‘Get your paws off me, you dirty ape’ line, it’s a little cheesy. But the full scene with all the context is utterly fantastic.

So little bits like that add to the fun of the film.

And that’s the only real reason to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes: to have fun. It’s an enjoyable ride, and thankfully not in3D. Just don’t go in expecting any sort of masterpiece. The only thing you should expect is awesome ape action!