Who let the monkeys out?

If anybody has ever doubted how effective motion capture technology — involving green body suits covered in little white ping pong balls and computer-generated movie characters — is at making a movie work, then rest assured that Rise of the Planet of the Apes has the definitive answer: not very well.

The good news is that things will always get better thanks to highly talented physical performers like Andy Serkis. The guy who famously brought Gollum to cinematic life in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the same brilliant actor behind Peter Jackson’s King Kong reboot in 2005. There couldn’t be a more qualified actor to portray a chimpanzee who becomes a warrior king in charge of an entire planet … of apes. One day, there will be an Oscar category created just to acknowledge the hard work of performers just like him.

This unnecessary but enjoyable backstory to the entire and extended Planet of the Apes saga starts in San Francisco with ardent — but certainly not mad — genius scientist Will Rodman (James Franco). He has spent the last five years working on drugs that allow the brain to repair itself. We’ve all heard the story of how we lose so many brain cells every day, right? Well, his wonder drug is designed to cure people with Alzheimer’s disease, just like his dad Charles (John Lithgow).

One day, he comes up with something good, but the first test subject, a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes, fights back and is destroyed. The whole program is shut down, but Bright Eyes had a little baby chimp and Will takes it home and raises it.

Naturally, or unnaturally, Caesar shows super intelligence and green eyes, learning new words in sign language every day and figuring out how to steal cookies from cookie jars, even when placed on the top of cabinets.

We later learn that he named the baby chimp after Shakespeare’s play about betrayal. We don’t really understand, however, why its green eyes are an indication of why it’s smarter than regular simians. Some questions are unimportant in this world of fantasy.

Caesar eventually gets into trouble and has to be housed in a primate sanctuary. In truth, it turns out to be a place of evil run by John Landon (Brian Cox). In this prison, he breeds a culture of animal torture and abuse, and his son Dodge (Tom Felton) picks up the gauntlet (and a stun gun) to help keep the inmates in line.

This is where Caesar learns to rise up, fight back and become a leader. He does indeed with his own form of gorilla warfare. I’m not giving anything away if you’ve seen the commercials.

Yes, it’s entirely predictable. Yes, there are moral overtones about the unscrupulousness of the pharmaceutical industry and the evils of cruelty to animals. Yes, there is also a little bit about how playing God with genetically modified viruses is actually a bad thing. Yes, there are even a few ham-handed moments that pay homage to Charlton Heston and the 1968 original film.

I’ll give it credit for not being as bloody, violent and scary as it could have been. It is rated PG, after all. It could have been better acted, but I don’t really expect much from Franco or the other humans here. There wasn’t much to enjoy from their performances, although Lithgow hit the nail on the head with his brief time onscreen.

This show wasn’t about the people, though. In the end, it turned out to be a rather humane adventure, one that was compelling for its look into animal culture as much as its spectacle.