A decade after the poor critical reception of the 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes”, the franchise was rebooted with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. A lot of people really seem to like this movie but it just didn’t do anything for me.

A scientist (James Franco “Spider-Man”, “This Is The End”) is developing a potential cure for Alzheimer’s disease as he raises a chimp by the name of Caesar (Andy Serkis “King Kong”, “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”). Caesar’s mother was given the newly developed drug and she passed its effects onto Caesar, giving him superintelligence and the ability to lead an ape uprising.

If you have seen the “Lord of the Rings” films or 2005’s “King Kong” then you will be familiar with Andy Serkis’ work. Don’t get me wrong, the effects for Caesar and the other apes are not bad but I couldn’t help but just feel like I was watching something made in a computer. Due to this, I found it difficult to empathise with the creature; I’m surprised by this as I felt the effects in “King Kong” made it easier to forget I was watching a computer’s work. I didn’t care about any of the human characters any more than I did the apes.

Although it has nods to the older films here and there, I found the experience of this movie to be so far removed from the original that it was almost as if it was just using the name “Planet of the Apes” for marketing reasons. Maybe I am being a little too harsh but I just didn’t see what most people claim to have seen. I like the some of the earlier “Planet of the Apes” films but I can see why many will find them outdated and cheesy so perhaps this is the version that would appeal most to those people.