http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/03/2343758/rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes.html

By Rene Rodriguez

...That’s the same effect Rise of the Planet of the Apes has on the viewer. You can’t wait for the film to get past its endless set-up and exposition and get to the fun stuff. But the wait is long. This prequel to the 1968 sci-fi classic explains exactly how Earth came to be overrun by hyper-intelligent apes while the human population died out. The idea is genius — what a creative way to relaunch a dormant franchise! — but the execution is something else entirely.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is filled with irritating clichés, such as the men assigned to care for the apes who abuse and taunt the animals for sadistic fun (they’re like prison guards in an exploitation movie). That mistreatment is supposed to justify why the apes eventually rise against us, but the story would have been more interesting if the apes, once the drugs started taking effect, simply decided to wage war on mankind because they deemed themselves superior (arrogance is just as human a trait as a lust for revenge).

Rise of the Planet of the Apes could have done without the romance between Will and his girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto), arguably the most irrelevant romantic subplot in cinematic history, or scenes involving highly-skilled professionals who bicker like schoolchildren (no wonder the apes kick our asses), or a needlessly drawn-out middle section detailing the animals’ gradual evolution.

The movie’s pacing is all off: Wyatt dotes on needless plot points other filmmakers would skip. There’s no momentum to the film, no sense of a build-up to an all-out war. Rise of the Planet of the Apes throws out references to previous Apes films to amuse hardcore fans, and the film delivers on its promise to reveal exactly how this doomsday scenario could happen. But rarely has a story about the end of the world seemed so boring.