Angry Movie Lurker Honest Review 50: Rise of the Planet of the Apes 2011 (4 STARS).

Area managers are killing me, demanding tea and biscuits and eating into my blogging time, on annual leave next week again (just taking my birthday off and using up the annual leave as I'm not going anywhere), got a game on Sunday (Egyptians vs Hittites) and you lot have yourselves a good weekend if you can.

During experiments to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, a genetically enhanced chimpanzee is smuggled out of the experiment and later on uses it's greater intelligence to lead other apes to freedom.

Wasn't too keen to see this to be honest but was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it, the CGI is very acceptable (Caesar and the other apes), good action, good story and a damn good ending.

Got the usual cliches with the mean monkey keeper at the sanctuary after Caesar attacks someone (this is where the story is at it's best), the greedy corporate suit whose push to use the new drug will seal his and humanity's fate. The main story is the Alzheimer's drug that fails at first but is secretly tested on a human by James Franco (tested on his dad because he has the disease) who smuggled Caesar out when he was a baby but things go wrong and he tries to stop any future reckless testing of a newer drug on apes.

I don't want to give away too much but it's definitely worth a watch and the sight of a silverback gorilla having issues with a helicopter pilot and crew (who have fired their guns at him) by entering said helicopter in flight and making his feelings very clear, there might be a sequel but an end scene makes it clear where the other movies came from and possibly how they came about.

Empire review here