66
Metascore
57 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80Screen RantGraeme GuttmannScreen RantGraeme GuttmannKingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a rousing action-adventure in the ruins of the human world – traces of the past remain but this is Noa's story.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJosh Friedman’s smart screenplay takes its cue from its recent predecessors in reflecting the politics of its time. But the movie works equally well as pure popcorn entertainment, packing its two-and-a-half-hour running time with nail-biting thrills but also allowing sufficient breathing space to build depth in the characters and story.
- 75IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichWes Ball’s lush and nuanced Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes might lack the epic sweep or revolutionary fervor of the recent Matt Reeves movies that salvaged this series from the stink that had been on it since 2001, but this well-honed adventure still manages to build on the best of their legacy, if largely because of its keen focus on the hard-fought lessons that have been forgotten from it.
- 70Paste MagazineTrace SauveurPaste MagazineTrace SauveurAfter 55 years of different directions, this is far from the most exciting Planet of the Apes has been, but it’s also far from the worst, and I’m open to seeing wherever this leads.
- 60The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeThe Irish TimesDonald ClarkeThe film is good enough to deserve the sequels towards which it there gestures.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe film becomes rather jumbled and preposterous by the very end, but not before some perfectly good action sequences, and the CGI ape faces are very good. This franchise has held up an awful lot better than others; now it should evolve to something new.
- 60ScreenCrushMatt SingerScreenCrushMatt SingerThere are some scenes here as lively and as thoughtful as any in this great series’ history. But then that final sequence reminds viewers that this is a franchise still thinking about the way things were, and not with the way things are — or could be in the future.
- 60Total FilmNeil SmithTotal FilmNeil SmithEntertaining enough but inessential, Kingdom offers spectacle and thrills but lacks the ambition, smarts, and gravity of its immediate predecessors.
- 58The Film StageAlistair RyderThe Film StageAlistair RyderIt’s the ideal third act for a Planet of the Apes movie––whether you want to sit through an extensive, near-90 minute journey that represents everything wrong with dystopian world-building in contemporary blockbusters to get there, however, is up to you.
- 50Slant MagazineJake ColeSlant MagazineJake ColeBy the time the demands of big-budget spectacle take over in the final act, a film that initially stands out from the pack in imagining a different perspective of the world ends up looking all too disappointingly like everything else in the current mega-budget cinema landscape.