I went along to see this movie mainly for a laugh – I mean seriously, apes taking over the earth? The trailers looked so hilarious. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a reboot of the series Planet of the Apes – James Franco is a scientist working at a big pharmaceutical company on a finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and of course chimps are used as the test subject. The drug mutates in the chimps giving them human level intelligence but because of one chimps gone bad all of the chimps are put down, except one of the babies. James Franco injects the “cure” into his father hoping to cure his Alzheimer’s and though it works for a while its effects soon taper off and James is forced to create something even more powerful. More chimps have been brought in in the mean time and the drug hits their system causing a city-wide outbreak. In the end the chimps only want to get across the Golden Gate Bridge to reach the forest but humans, as usual, not understanding the situation try to kill them en masse.

The movie wasn’t as horribly terrible as I thought it was going to be and in fact it contained some very touching moments which could have come across as corny. Great visual effects and some fairly significant content actually gave this movie more weight than I was expecting. Quite enjoyable.