Kayleigh Roberts and I review the box office-topping prequel. It has some things going for it – eye-catching special effects and good source material, for example. But as a revolutionary summer blockbuster experience, Apes doesn’t rise to the occasion (though it seems to think it does).

Just about everyone has declared 2011 to be the year of the sequel. With this weekend’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, prequels are also joining in on the franchise fun. The James Franco-starring movie has been doing fairly well at the box office so far, a bit surprising considering that target audience members for summer blockbusters have not likely seen the originally films. Memorable prequels do not come along very often, but Kayleigh and I each wrote about our top five favorites.