For a film about animal experimentation and the disasterous consequences, it could be forgiven for featuring heavy-handed moralising nobody is demonised, and no noble animal rights activist stands up in the final third and screams "You maniacs!". It tells the story first and allows the audience to make up their minds after, in the purest sense of the cliched phrase.
The CGI is blatant but oddly forgivable. While the Computer Generated camera still insists on doing the loops and swirls clearly impossible from a real camera, the fact that the film averts rendering anything less believable than a few monkeys (i.e. a giant fantasy army) allows the audience (i.e. me) to consciously shore up the suspension of disbelief on the grounds that the filmmakers were simply saving a bit of money and a lot of trouble on casting real chimps. There is an odd fixation on the chimp's eyes - the least renderable body part - but for the most part it holds up, or can at worst be overlooked.
The pacing is perhaps the finest aspect. Disposing of the model of having the pacing consist of a series of peaks and troughs mathmatically calculated to occur at scientifically approved moments throughout the film - the same model that killed Captain America stone dead and by which you could have set your watch by - it instead has moves along steadilly with a gradual build to a natural climax. Plotted on a graph it would be a line. This same tight pacing lets the switch from family drama to ape prison break occur with minimal disruption, and also ensures that no aspect is dwelled upon longer than necessary - neither the humans or the apes, nor the scenes of tragedy or cruelty.
Altogether a solid film plus monkeys.
