The CGI gets better but the movies get less entertaining

Saw this movie not so long ago and it wasn't as good as I expected. Something was lacking and I can't quite put a finger on it. I guess for one, it was too long and took a while to get going to the main part of the story. Until that point a large portion of it was just Caesar and his buddies on the road and I was beginning to wonder why this was called 'War' when there seemed to be little of it. Once we reached the Colonel, it was mainly more of the prison camp stuff that we saw at the end of the previous one. Maybe I felt that I was led up the garden path a little bit by the title and was disappointed that there wasn't much warfare involved, until the very end.

A few other things I wasn't sure about, like the ape with the clothes. He felt really incongruous; the whole voice, look, and comical aspect of him. I don't think he belonged and actually served little purpose.

I've got to ask about the girl too. Was that her father that they killed? If so, she didn't seem that bothered when she discovered him dead and suddenly had to live with some talking apes. She cried more for the gorilla that gave her a flower.