She is captured in a teeming jungle and brought back to San Francisco to be part of an experiment being run by a determined scientist (an appropriately earnest Franco) employed by the pharmaceutical corporation Gen-Sys. It’s not Caesar, future godfather of all apedom, who we meet first, but his mother, Bright Eyes. It’s effectively written by the team of Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and well acted both by stars like James Franco and John Lithgow and supporting players like the protean Brian Cox. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is as good as it is partly because it’s strong in the areas all films, not just summer blockbusters, should be. The film was popular enough to spawn four sequels as well as a Tim Burton-directed remake, but this latest venture, which reveals how it all began to go bad for us and good for them, takes things to a whole other level. That year’s Charlton Heston-starring “Planet of the Apes” (based on a novel by Pierre Boulle) posited a world where simians were in charge and people were in cages. Adroitly blending the most modern technology with age-old story elements, it’s also an origin story that answers the question that’s been hanging in the air since 1968: How did it happen that apes rule? Smart, fun and thoroughly enjoyable, it’s a model summer diversion that entertains without insulting your intelligence. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” does it right.
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