Having enjoyed the original P.O.T. A., I was expecting a both thorough and convincing account of how apes came to be the dominant species on planet Earth (apologies for that spoiler if you've spent the last few decades on Mars and have never seen the original). I wasn't disappointed.
The explanation was two-fold: firstly, human scientists meddling (yet again) with nature, with laudable attempts to find a cure for disease (echoes of Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend here) ultimately unleashing terrible consequences for humanity per se, but with the additional, (debatably) successful result of increasing the intelligence of the apes being experimented upon. There's a healthy dollop of criticism aimed at profit-making drug companies and medical experimentation on animals, indeed the treatment of captive animals generally, yet it's the triumph of sentiment over reason which is the turning point leading to the final disaster, leaving an ambiguity as to whether science itself is totally in the firing line here.
As for plausibility, the CGI is great: the facial expressions of the apes (especially the main character) are brialliantly both realistic and humanistic. The story line, too, is more-or less totally convincing, an exception being the way Caesar learns to speak. On the one hand, this happens late on, when he has already acquired sign language and non-verbal reasoning, and furthermore the words he uses exactly reflect, in the right order, the way in which children learn to speak, so someone has done their linguistics homework, BUT surely apes do not possess the correct physiology for forming human speech? Just a thought.
Entertainment-wise, this is a fairly action-packed story - even the odd car chase - with a few slower, emotional moments, including romance, so there's wide appeal. It's a 12A so your intelligent ten-year-old might enjoy it too, if they don't get upset at the violence against animals. Look out for nods to the original, including a cameo appearance of the Statue of Liberty.
