BEAST: Apes Doesn't Just Rise, It Soars!

Critics are cheering on Rise of the Planet of the Apes, promising that Andy Serkis' CG performance is so good, you'll root for humanity to fall. Here's a taste of what they're saying:

• Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal is breathless with praise, saying the movie “rises above its dramatic deficits, boosts the collective IQ of this summer's movies, and swings into flights of kinetic fantasy that blow the collective mind. … This is a Frankenstein myth for our time.”

•  Admitted “ape purist” Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News calls it “this summer’s best popcorn flick,” gushing that it has the “rich, witty, fascinating metaphor” of the originals married with “good heart, strong action, and a fantastic motion-capture performance to boot.”

•  If you’re expecting the worst—and after Tim Burton's 2001 remake, who could blame you—“you may, like me, be genuinely surprised by where this movie takes you,” writes Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. But “there are silly bits, plenty of them, and you are forgiven if you can’t access the proper level of sci-fi fanboy appreciation.”

•  Indeed, Andrew O’Hehir of Salon sees it as a "fundamentally mediocre film" that seems "devoted to recapturing or updating the high-camp, drive-in intensity of the original Apes films." He admits he enjoyed it "despite its evident silliness and the fact that nobody's likely to remember it three weeks from now." Still, "Andy Serkis is awesome as our future ape ruler." James Franco? He barely registers.