I'll disagree with the article above.
The movie's success will NOT depend on how good the CGI effects are. It'll depend on the same thing that every movie's success depends on. Is there a good story that sucks in the theater goers, with characters that the audience care about? If you don't have a good plot and characters then excellent CGI effects won't save the film because the audience won't care what's going on. Conversely, we will forgive less than stellar effects in a movie if everything else is good.
The article author gives a great example, the Planet of the Apes movies. The original film, with Charleton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans, has good makeup for the time and no CGI. It pales in comparison, special effects wise, compared to the recent movies. But I'll state that it is vastly superior to the ham-handed new movies.
You care about the characters. You want to know with George Taylor, where has he landed and what is going on? You care for the research of Cornelius and Zira and will they run afoul of the religious establishment (to me they are the heroes of the movie). You even understand the misgivings of Dr Zaius, into looking too far into your own past and what you could find there. You have to care about all that for the last scene to make the impact it did.
I'm not too crazy about any Ang Lee movie. I don't think his characters are that enticing and developed and I've seen all his films since The Ice Storm. We'll see.