cool to hate

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2010)

It is always fun to read the 1 out of 10 star reviews on a movie like this. A quarter million IMDb reviewers found this film to be near the best a movie can be and 80% of top critics on RottenTomatoes thought it was good. This being the internet, the next step is for the contrarians to pop out from under their troll bridges and explain why it is actually the worst thing ever made. Really? The acting is one star, the story is one star, the dialogue is one star, the special effects are one star and the overall movie worse than, say, Glitter? Someone even had to post that he is in Mensa and he is smart enough to know that this movie is stupid.
Let me quickly say that I feel most people would enjoy the mixture of action, emotion and brain tease that Inception delivers. It is a very solidly built piece of entertainment. The music can be a bit overwhelming and there is a bit too much exposition but otherwise this is a very engaging and clever movie with enough emotional moments to make you care about the action. It solidly deserves a place in the top 250 which has great movies listed despite the constant gripes that it is filled with summer blockbusters and pop fluff.
In response to some of the main critiques that the geniuses have posited:
"Dreams don't work like that - all SMART people know this." - it is made pretty clear during the movie that these dreams are chemically controlled to induce certain levels of sleep depending on the chemist's concoctions. This allows Nolan to give his movie a set of rules that are a bit more hardline than actual dreams. He has also introduced an architect to control things. So, yes, it isn't as dreamlike as other dream movies because we are being guided by drugs, an architect, and a team of dream manipulators.
"Nothing matters because it is all a dream." - nothing matters in life because we are all going to die and the sun will explode and erase everything that ever was. Cobb's battles with his demons and the threat of being trapped in a hellish mental limbo are real whether the whole thing was a dream or not.
"There is no there there." - knowing this line and repeating it doesn't make your argument any more valid than the overused "jumped the shark" quote.
Obviously not every movie will be liked by every person but it is hard to believe that this movie that has so many well-crafted aspects could honestly be deserving of one star.