Not worth the time

Rating: 4/10 (3 December 2013)

I saw the big Hollywood bucks, and the two big stars, and I thought that this surely would disappoint. And I was, unfortunately, right. Just for action and CGI, this is an OK film to watch. Otherwise, not worth the time.
Unlike others, I thought Jodi Foster did the maniacal bitch very well, especially astutely playing a French upper class careerist who speaks fluent, but slightly accented English. The accent, the mannerisms, and the facial gestures are perfectly fine tuned. Matt Damon was OK, nothing special. Some of the supporting roles were well played. I liked that the people who were supposed to speak Spanish actually spoke proper Latin American Spanish (not some Americans pretending to speak Spanish in horrible accents; Matt Damon did this well, though you would think that if someone grew up with Spanish-speaking nuns, he would have a better accent).
The plot and the dialog were severely lacking. It seemed like the first draft of a film, except for the special effects. It seemed like someone in high school had a "cool" idea, where the rich people would live in the sky, and the poor people would suffer in an overcrowded Earth below. Why bother with space; this already exists here on Earth. Rich people have access to medical services way beyond anyone poor can ever hope for. They can choose to bathe in bubbly and travel in jets. How is the space thing make this any different? Most of the time, there is a air of profoundness in the film that is misplaced or completely lacking.
And a word about med-bays that detect in one second the medical problem and fix it in, oh, ten seconds... This will NEVER happen. OK, it will happen, when all laws of physics change. Until then, no. So it is good to dream, but maybe a bit too ridiculous. And ridiculous would be OK, if this was the only thing wrong with the film, but it wasn't.
So in the end, what they did is supposed to solve the world's problems? So now the human population that Earth cannot handle will not only continue to live on Earth, but will do so in perfect health, breeding freely and healthily, to... increase their population further? How is this going to help anyone? Overpopulation is supposed to cause disease and hunger and death. These are not problems in that context, they are solutions from Nature's point of view (of course, one hopes that we prevent such an outcome, but then again, humans are never very good at prevention).
In sum, barring the action scenes, not much that makes sense here. It is not clear what the film is doing or saying, though it is clear that it is trying to say or do something.