Return of the Revenge of the Rise of the Conquest of the Planet of the Apes!

So summer 2011 continues to be a pleasant surprise. Who thought another Planet of the Apes movie would actually turn out to be one of the best films of the year? Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a prequel (or a reboot, if you prefer) but it doesn't fall into the trap of showing us stuff we already know. The story focusses on chimpanzee Ceaser (who also led the ape revolt in the very different Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) and really, aside from good guy scientist James Franco and his Alzheimer's afflicted dad (John Lithgow), the human characters are pretty unimportant, mostly serving to illustrate how much humans are plain old gits.
Having a chimp as the main character (and a computer generated one to boot) could have backfired disastrously. Luckily, Ceaser is created by Weta and motion-captured by Andy Serkis who, after playing Gollum and King Kong deserves at least a special award for mo-capping performances. We follow the chimp pretty much throughout the whole movie as he grows more and more intelligent, thanks to the brain drugs given to him by his owner. After he bites a man harassing Lithgow, Ceaser ends up in primate prison and it is there he sees exactly how cruel humans can be and leads an ape revolt that spills out onto the streets and bridges of San Francisco.
The film is a character drama first and an action film second, which means it has a lot more impact than your standard summer blockbuster (hello, Michael Bay). By the end of the movie, as in Avatar, I was cheering for the damn dirty humans to get what they deserved.
The special effects are mostly flawless, though there are a few scenes where the CG apes look a little too rubbery. The performances are good and there is a nice amount of humour in the film (though I could have done without Draco Malfoy quoting two lines from the original). More importantly, unlike the 2001 Planet of the Apes (which I actually enjoyed more than most people) this film is actually about something, with a strong argument against animal testing. It's rare to get excited about a reboot of a franchise (especially from Fox) but I'm excited to see where both this and X-Men: First Class go next. It's been one hell of a summer.