What is Inception? An idea, without substance.

Rating: 4/10 (21 July 2010)

There's a lot of intellectual snobbery going on with fans of this movie. Everyone seems to think it's incredibly deep and crafted to intelligent audiences and that the only people who wouldn't like it are "idiots who don't get it." I understood it perfectly well and the idea of going into dreams is fantastic, but an idea doesn't make a movie. This movie failed to deliver a good plot, characterization, and most importantly the climax was one of the least interesting parts of the film! This film has all the ingredients to be great: Christopher Nolan, Leonardo Dicaprio, Ken Wantanabe... Unfortunately it ended up being more like a bad rip-off of the Matrix than something great.
The idea behind this movie is that people can enter dreams simultaneously through some sort of unknown technology/methods. Great idea until you get into the details.
Dreamers enter dreams are designed by "the architects." These "maps" were very ordinary places with the only exception being a few changes of gravity and a few extra special effects. My problem was that even if these dreams are designed, they are still dreams. The dreamers only addition is the "projections" which were all people who existed in the dreams. I don't know about Leonardo Dicapro and Chris Nolan, but my dreams contain numerous "projections" which are not only out of the ordinary, but often bizarre. The idea that somehow people are allowed to be created, but not anything else what so ever is pretty mindless.
The movie really went downhill when you realize that the team is on a mission to go deep into the sub-conscious of a billionaire who is about to inherit his father's company. Their goal? to split his company apart. Why? To make one of the characters more powerful.
The background story about the main characters life with his wife and the dream world he constructed with her is by far the best part of the movie. I' would have much rather watched a movie all about this then what Inception really was. The entire movie leads you to believe there the main character's story will somehow end up in a typical Nolan scene where something spectacular happens -it doesn't. The only thing that happens with his wife is exactly what you could have guessed as soon as you find out about why she acts the way she does.
The movie ended one that ended up being more of a cheesy action film then something with substance. What a waste! This movie was still better than a lot of the junk that Hollywood puts out, but after seeing Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, and the Dark Knight, I really expected more.