Pretentious...overblown...but at least it's too long...

Rating: 2/10 (13 July 2010)

This is the kind of movie designed to make really stupid people feel smart.
"Inception" continues Christopher Nolan's steep decline after the riveting "Following" and the clever "Memento." There's a germ of a good idea here. (In fact, there are germs of 9 good ideas here. But they are all poorly thought-through and badly realized.
Nolan draws on Orpheus (DiCaprio) trying to save his doomed wife (Cotillard) from Hades (here: Limbo.) There's Ariadne (Page) who helps Theseus (DiCaprio again) thread through the maze of the Minotaur. There are riffs on Jung's archetypal projections and Freud's "unconscious" blah blah blah as if Nolan opened up a book by Joseph Campbell, sprinkled in some "psychological ops" nonsense...and said "I am BRILLIANT!" Well, Nolan started with great ingredients. But they're all poorly mixed, half-baked and layered precariously on top of one another.
Bottom line: this is a truly dreadful film which will be hailed by people -- who because they're confused -- will think it's JENIUS! The only good thing? I finally understand how Scientology caught on.