Review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) by Rex_Richards — 20 Jul 2014

OK so it has great fx, almost REALLY great fx, but that's it.

But apart from that, this is a badly written cowboys and indians movie, with apes instead of injuns and some virus survivors instead of a circle of wagons and John Wayne. The characters are completely predictable and idiotic, it has more holes than gouda cheese and absolutely non of the scope of the original reboot. The whole thing relies on a big fight scene which the hero human could have easily EASILY avoided, as could the super smart apes, but instead the writers just assume that you, me, the audience are dumber than a regular chimp chucking its poop around in your local zoo.

There are so many things to dislike and feel cheated by here, guns with never ending ammo, apes suddenly talking to each other for no reason, horribly obvious ape disfigurements to help you recognize which one is which, an orang utan the size of a bus, completely stupid decisions by humans and the most awful 'stirring speeches' by the human leader that would in reality make you want to shoot yourself not an ape, the list goes on.

I don't understand 'critics'. this is rubbish. I mean, it looks amazing, and at least you can follow the action, it's not full of jumpy cuts, but really... it's a vfx tour de force, but this is in the same intellectual league as transformers dark of the moon or Need for Speed, Amazing Spiderman 2, the bad Godzilla from the 90s, or even the tim burton version of planet of the apes. So either critics follow each other like sheep, or they deserve a cage in the zoo so they can throw poop at each other and not bother us humans.

So the first time you see a monkey doing something unexpected it provides a cheap thrill but otherwise...