“RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES” My rating: C (Opens wide on Aug. 5)
105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
At about the one-hour-and-20-minute mark the simian protagonists of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” rebel against their human captors/tormentors and run amuck in San Francisco. And for a few moments this moribund movie comes to life.
Getting to that point, though, is a real slog.
This prequel, which purports to show how those chimps, gorillas and orangutans in the original “Planet of the Apes” came to rule over humans, is sort of like a rejected Dickens novel. Instead of a plucky young human protagonist we have Caesar, an animated chimp acted by Andy Serkis (Gollum of the “LOTR” franchise) and made flesh — er, pixels — through the wonders of motion capture technology. (more…)