Enjoyable, but not original

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2010)

This seriously was just an average suspense film that is filled with holes in virtually every level of the story-line. The underlying plot seemed somewhat obvious to me, and sadly, I realized it in the first hour (essentially ruining the rest of film). My biggest complaint is that so many of the rules and plot twists were simply verbally explained to the audience, and not even very well. In fact, this was the nature of Ellen Page's entire character - to explain the story - literally. There seemed to be little consistency in the carryover effects of the dream levels. For instance, how was the perception of time affected deeper in, but not the perception of the music being played? Did the characters just imagine the little machine the they used? And what if someone imagined it worked differently - how do they control for that? How come the physical perception of the kick was constant on all dream levels but the non-gravity thing only affected one level?? The actual totem's couldn't actually come into a dream, so what kept someone from imagining them as having different properties? This is just a start to my complaints... Maybe these answers are out there, but altogether, I found the movie to be far too crafted. The writers tried way too hard to make it complicated (which didn't really work out) and then had to verbally explain the whole thing to you anyway (rather than let you experience it). The plot was a contrived Matrix, even Sixth Sense, Jacob's Ladder - no matter how you try to twist it - we've seen this movie before and done MUCH better!