Directed by: Rupert Wyatt | Written by: Amanda Silver & Rick Jaffa | Starring: James Franco, Freida Pinto, Tom Felton |

“American pop-corn” pellets. Not to be consumed too seriously. Mild dosage recommended.
Usually when animals escape from their captive cage, they really don’t have a plan. They just run around, cause havoc, maybe take a leak, fool around until they get caught again! However Caesar, the accidental pet of Dr. Will (James Franco), aggregates an army of apes and leads them to their ultimate goal. So can the genetically modified Chimpanzee and his army achieve freedom? Watch it the Hollywood way!

This movie gives a casual sneak peek of what’s bound to happen in the future of genetic engineering. In the words of Caroline (Frieda Pinto) “Somethings aren’t meant to be changed”. Should we call this a commercial venture by Frieda? All she does is appear on-screen beside James Franco. Maybe this was more important for her as she wanted to make her counterparts in B-wood feel jealous. Now coming back to what she says in the movie “Somethings aren’t meant to be changed.”, she means ‘Nature’ should not be intervened. Genetic Engineering creates a parallel ‘Nature’ and has pros and cons just like any other branch of science.

Tom Felton repeats the role of a bully in a non-HP franchise too! Boy, you need some counseling! The crowd-pullers here are James Franco and his super-smart pet Caesar. The writers have an interesting plot, however a running time of just 105 minutes on screen too seems dragging! Maybe because they did not want to rush to climax.

The makers of this movie are counting on Oscar-winning visual effects house WETA Digital–employing certain of the groundbreaking technologies developed for “Avatar“, they have rendered photo-realistic apes rather than costumed actors in this movie. This makes this movie even more watchable, a breath of fresh-air from the usual computer generated graphics.

Get ready to hear some lame conversations like ” (Franco yells) Caesar ! ….(then Pinto yells) Caesar…. (then Franco’s dad yells) Caesar? …. “. This would have been more interesting if the ape could talk back. Caesar stands for the pride of apes and he executes in style!

— Varun Mannava Gowtham