The reviews are warm, and consistently so: eight of nine are positive, and several call this the strongest of the original sequels. The praise clusters on the script, which sends Cornelius and Zira back to 1970s California and turns the series round so the apes are the outsiders, and on Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter, whose likeable double act carries the fish-out-of-water comedy of the first half. Don Taylor’s direction is described as efficient and tactful, and most critics admire the way the film moves from satire to something much darker without losing its footing.
The reservations are few and mild. Empire is the lone mixed voice, finding the opening potentially silly, the ending predictable and the central idea watered down by the job of setting up later entries. The New Yorker has quibbles about characterisation. Otherwise the spread is narrow, and the later writers are, if anything, warmer than the contemporary ones.