Not deserving of the glowing reviews

Rating: 4/10 (3 January 2014)

When I first saw the trailer for Gravity I thought it looked OK, not amazing, just OK. Then I started to hear the hype. Critics were throwing around praise like 'One of the sci-fi greats' and 'simply stunning'.. Then I looked on IMDb and saw that it had a score of 8.4! To put it into perspective that's almost as high as James Cameron's Aliens. Surely this movie was something very special? Now that I have seen it I can safely say that it is not special. Not special and quite frankly not very good. Sandra Bullock is exceptionally annoying in her role as the marooned space damsel in distress. Her constant whining and panicking is not at all in line with the excellent and comprehensive training provided by NASA. There should also be an award for the biggest waste of a Hollywood A lister in a movie for George Clooney. He kind of floats around a bit with some very irritating and badly written dialogue and then floats away like some kind of space moron if you will. His character just didn't make sense.
The movie had a very plodding and clumsy feel to it. The pacing was all wrong, it was only 90 minutes long but the dullness and tedium of it all made it feel like double that. I was checking my watch 20 mins in which I rarely do for such big movies. OK I'll give the filmmakers some credit as realistically portraying someone being stuck in space is not easy to do. My problem with it is that they just didn't do it very well. No build up of tension, no fear, no concern for the plight of our heroine.
I also feel I should address the ridiculously bloated IMDb score. I know it's each to their own about how movies should be rated but 8.4 for this? Seriously? All I can think of is either that the producers paid people to post fake reviews or Sandra/George have some very loyal fans. Bitterly disappointing.