Vintage Nolan.

Rating: 1/10 (23 July 2010)

Siigh...okay, it took me a whole week to decide to put my thoughts about this disappointing crapfest down in writing, so here goes...
I do not agree with those reviews that state this is an "original" idea of Nolan's. Haven't you people seen the anime film, "Paprika?" And what about "The Matrix"? Those movies, to me, did a MUCH BETTER job in dealing with the concept of dreams and the distortion between them as far as what exactly ARE dreams and what exactly IS reality? IMHO, "INCEPTION" was a mess. To me, and to a lot of other people, it was ambiguous just for the sake of being ambiguous.
Just one of my many beefs about this movie was that dreams should be amorphic. People's faces, backgrounds, should've been somewhat distorted or at least a little blurry. Things should not have been so artfully contrived. Most if not ALL dreams, are not so well crafted or constructed down to the last detail. All we got with "INCEPTION" was falling buildings??! Really? There was NOTHING dream-like about ANY of those scenes. Even when Ellen Page "oh-so-perfectly" designed, maneuvered and constructed bridges and mirrors and other crap. Gimme a break! Everything was just WAAAYY too convenient and perfectly timed down to the minute. And what the hell is "LIMBO"??? What, we're all just supposed to accept this kind of blatantly crappy inexplicable science-fiction?
And even though some things don't always HAVE to be explained, the mystery surrounding the dream "device" and that dream "drug" wasn't all that interesting. I was able to suspend my disbelief in movies like "Paprika" and "The Matrix" because not only were those story lines just way more cohesive(as far as story arcs are concerned), I was also given enough exposition to actually CARE about some of the characters. I didn't get to that point with "INCEPTION". Even though I really liked Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's characters, I didn't really give a crap if they got sent towait for it.the limbo of no return. God. It actually made me wince to type that.
Like many reviews so aptly and succinctly stated, this movie simply hobbled along due to a seriously weak exposition and atrocious plot pacing. It was VERY self-indulgent. And the ending was not only predictable, it insulted my intelligence. Nolan is one of the most overrated directors out there, and this movie is just another vehicle for his enormous ego to perpetuate the notion that he's a genius when he's really a hack. He may have some really good ideas and concepts, but he SUCKS on his follow through. He knows how to generate the hype machine, which makes people feel like, if they didn't "get" or "like" one of his movies, then they're not part of the really "cool" and "in" sub-culture of our times. Just like with TDK, which I think was and still is THE most overrated movie of our time.
Don't buy into the hype. Stop letting ol' Nolan boy pull the strings. If one of his movies sucks, then it sucks. There's nothing at all wrong, uncool or apocryphal about that. It just IS. And this DID.
And come on, people! This movie in NO WAY deserves a rating above a 9 or an 8! Try about a 6.5. No higher.