Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Movie Review

  Who's in it?

Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Andy Serkis and Gary Oldman

What's it about?

When the humans begin to run out of diesel for power generation, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) makes a truce with Caeser (Andy Serkis)and the evolved apes to be able to activate the dam, power the human city and get out of the ape's forest. As you can imagine, it doesn't go well. 

Any Good?        

I never watched the first of this prequel-reboot-sequel for a self evident reason when you read those three words, but I was surprised with the alright-ness of this.

If you even pay the closest shred of attention to the characters you know EXACTLY what would happen - I don't know if that's due to laziness or trying to take a 'critical' look back on the human race. The whole 'apes are the same as humans' is in your face in every decision of the apes which flies in the face of the entire premise of the film series; but I digress. 

Some of the acting is just bad, Malcolm just stands there catching flies when he has something incredibly important to tell the group, like that guy that gets bitten by zombies in every piece of zombie media ever. Malcolm's wife Ellie's (Kerri Russel) entire script seems to have comprised of one phrase - MAAAALCOOOOLM - and JESUS does it grate on the ears after the first time. I'm not sure if bad script or acting, or both, but you'll surely see what I  mean.

While the CGI is pretty fantastic - if unnecessary -  it doesn't save it from bad human characters with no substance in their scripts and a stupidly long run time. There is some heart-wrenching moments (even if the context is whispered in your ear) that can be worth it, including the AWESOME Maurice the orangutan that make it worth a watch if you're into the series.

  Rating: