"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" Review

First of all, this movie is the biggest shocker of 2011 for me.  I was planning on seeing a pretty bad movie going into it, but everything is explained and I ended up really liking this film.  I will indeed see this one again!  What really drove this movie was its screenplay and fantastic computer generation, including Andy Serkis' performance in the motion capture of Caesar.  The apes looked VERY realistic!
James Franco returns to the screen after his Academy Award nominating role in "127 Hours".  He plays Will Rodman the lead scientist at a corpoation named GenSys creating a retrovirus called ALZ-112 which is supposedly the cure for Alzheimer's Disease.  To test this compound, the company analyzes it on apes.  One of these apes being tested gives birth to an ape later named Caesar and the compound is passed to him genetically.  However Caesar's mother tries to protect him and breaks out of her containment and disrupts a board meeting and is killed by security.  This event shuts the lab down and all the apes are then put down by the "ape guy" Robert Franklin played by Tyler Labine.  Franklin is unable to put down little baby Caesar and asks Rodman to take him in and care for him.  Rodman takes Caesar in as a pet and studies him throughout its life.  With being born with ALZ-112, Caesar gets smarter and smarter.
John Lithgow plays Charles Rodman, Will's father, who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease.  He is the influence for Will to create this compound.  After seeing that it worked on Ceasar, Will uses it on his father.  Charles wakes up the next morning better than ever.  This ends up backfiring later on because Charles' body develops antibodies that fight off the ALZ-112 and his Alzheimer's symptoms come back with a vengeance.  It is for this reason that ALZ-113 is developed which is delivered in aerosol form.  This compound however works on apes with brain functionality, but is highly contagious and fatal to humans .  Robert Franklin administers this compound to all the new apes and contracts the virus accidentally and the virus starts to spread among humans like wildfire at the end of the film.
This film is a reboot/prequel to the 1968 "Planet of the Apes" starring Charleston Heston and there are many references to the original all throughout.  Assuming that the sequels lead to a full-scale remake, the ALZ-113 virus will be the explanation behind what happened to all the humans on earth after the astronauts crash-land.
This movie is definitely worth checking out; I think you'll enjoy it.  Although it won't get any kind of attention from the academy, I call this the best film of 2011.  I give it 4.5 stars!