The Emperor's new clothes?

Rating: 2/10 (26 July 2010)

Inception has received almost unanimously good reviews in the press. So who am I to say, as an ordinary, paying member of the filmgoing public, that this movie is a dog? I have to qualify that - I left after the first hour or so (during the gunfight. Sorry, that's not very clear: during the yellow cab gunfight to distinguish it from all the other gunfights.) I really have better things to do with my time - even writing this.
Back to the movie (or half of it, anyway.) Dreams within dreams within dreams don't have to be logical - I suppose they wouldn't be dreams if they were - but a story *should* be logical, or at least be capable of explanation. And this one isn't.
From a screenplay point of view it just didn't hang together for me: the episodic nature of the story, such as it is, made no sense whatsoever. I realise that this was probably the intention and that presumably all would eventually become clear: it's just that I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to sit through to the end. Almost every utterance by the characters seemed to come out of thin air, with no relevance to anything else. The innumerable fights lost all meaning, and the undoubtedly clever GCI effects appeared to me to be the sole reason for making the film in the first place.
"Hey, let's make a movie with CGI better than Avatar! Those effects will be great! Can we build a storyline around them?....". Sorry, the effects *are* good (even if nothing like as stunning those in Avatar), but the complete lack of a halfway believable plot line just doesn't cut it for me.
As others have said, the soundtrack didn't help: muffled dialogue and loud, pretentious music don't mix. But then again, who cares? The dialogue was truly, mindbendingly, banal.
Sir Michael: you don't need the money, do you? Please use a little discrimination when accepting roles!
Two out of ten - it would probably be one out of ten if I had been able to stick it to the end.
(Edited: After I had posted this I looked for the first time at others' reviews, and noticed that Dylan - 24th July - has used exactly the same summary as I. There must be a clue there?)