First of all, let me just say that there's only one real reason to see this movie, and it's for the effects. If you go to see this flick, it's to see the actors dressed up like monkeys and acting like them. That's all that there is to this movie: Some funky makeup and some pretty cool acting effects.
The story? Simple enough. Astronaut goes forward in time and lands on planet where apes rule and humans are worse than slaves. This human, a guy who doesn't take shit from nobody including his supervisors back in the past, is taken captive and soon decides that he must escape and, eventually and reluctantly, lead a revolt against the apes.
I'm not even going to go into specifics as to who's in this movie, because most of the stars are easily dismissed as forgettable. The only star to truly shine is Tim Roth as one crazed ape general. Wow. Now HE steals every scene he's in, and he does it well.
This isn't to say that the movie isn't enjoyable. It is. It's quite enjoyable. I had a blast watching Tim Roth doing his thing, as with the actor who played the ape slave-trader (he was amusing, too). The twist ending (and boy, does it keep on twisting) does a good job at explaining how this planet got this way. That's where this version really surpasses the original (and I mean where it wasn't easy to surpass the original; the way makeup and special effects have evolved and improved over the years, making the apes seem like actual apes wasn't too hard at all, all things considered), and it's that it makes the entire premise of the movie feasible and understandable. We don't need multiple movies to explain this to us. It's all up there on the screen at the end, and it works well.
Other than that? Well, it looks good. It doesn't have that Tim Burton gothic twistiness to the sets, and that's a good thing. No, this stays with good ol' jungles and deserts, and it works.
One of the things that didn't seem to wash with me is where the love triangle is. First you have the aforementioned spaceman; then there's the ape who is sympathetic with humans (female, of course); and then there's the woman human. The two females form a romantic interest with said Spaceman. You want to know the sickest thing about all this is? It's that there's more logic in the ape's interest than the human female's. Y'see, the ape talks with the Spaceman, where the human woman barely has any contact with him at all.
This brings me to the whole beef as to why the hell do we need romantic interests in movies anyways, but that's a rant all its own.
The end line? It's a decent enough movie, as it stands. It's not great, and it doesn't have the intellectual capacity of the original, but it's still a good movie, and it still poses some questions about evolution and all that kind of thing. Basically, the ape effects make it, and the actors in those costumes do a wonderful job.
And did I mention that Tim Roth steals every scene he's in? Well, he does.
(NOTE: watch the first one with Charlton Heston before you see this one; first reason being that it'll give you a number of good laughs because of Heston's cheese and overacting; second, so you can catch the references that this "re-imagining" makes to the original; there are quite a few, and it's kinda fun when you notice them)