Now, I say started out well, but I did have to get past its being set in 1991: if I'm not mistaken, that's 20 years for the cats and dogs to be wiped out, the simians to become the salve for that wound, and the simians to grow significantly in both size and their capacity to understand human speech; this last point is especially noticeable near the end, when all of Caesar's (Roddy McDowall) forces clearly understand his complicated monologue. In all fairness, setting the date aside was not a chore: the richness of the world captivated me early, with its stark future - did anyone else think of the Empire? - and ape conditioning.
However, I found that it slowly descended into melodrama as the story played out. First, there was the casting of a black man as the sympathetic human (the descent is completely when they openly reference the slavery of the black man at the movie's conclusion). Then, there was the bungled execution of Caesar (why were the machine's lights illuminated the whole time?). Finally, there was the "bloodless" revolution, which did not capture the brutality of the act at all; initially, I thought that may have been because of the state of special effects in the early 70's, but the graphic Tragedy of Macbeth contradicts that argument.
In the end, I had no patience for any of the many soliloquies... It's unfortunate, because I really enjoyed a good portion of this movie. Oh well, one more to go.
