First, it's not a bad movie, but neither is it a great movie, which what the 8 average (as offered up by IMDb users) have given it. That would put this movie above Titanic (7.4) and just below Avatar (8.1), which is ridiculous. It's not even as good as the Mark Wahlberg movie a few years ago.

Having said that, it's decent film that movie fans should see, but seeing on the big screen isn't mandated. The story telling in "Apes" is unique in that it tells the story from the point of view an orphaned chimp named Caesar, adopted as a lab-test animal by a drug researcher played by James Franco, who's good in this. Franco's character is trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's, which his father, played by the terrific John Lithcow, is in the grips of.

But the stories is told through the eyes of chimp Caesar, who goes from family pet/child to being the punching bag for a tyrannical chimp in a California rescue facility for apes. But as clever Caesar outsmarts his aggressor, he comes to realize that the humans that run the facility -- and the world at large -- are the real tyrants, and he sets out to set things right.

That portion of the story works well. What doesn't work is the predictable evil pharmaceutical boogeyman playing God by splicing DNA for profit.

As I said, the movie is OK, but and 8? Give me a break.