Felt like a 14 year old read about Descartes, Plato and Aristotle on wikipedia while stoned and wrote this movie

Rating: 5/10 (24 July 2010)

I don't think there are serious spoilers but just to be safe it's marked.
Not bad, but disappointing if this is the most intelligent movie Hollywood is making.
I suppose if you haven't read or seen anything like this before, it may seem innovative. It is not an original idea... But then again, so many ideas are not. It could still have been a fine movie. But alas, it's a mess...
Lets start with the obvious: The "action". So boring and pointless... I wish the money spent on all that could be sent to Haiti, or donated to fight climate change. It not only made the movie a mess, it was such a waste... Why do they feel every movie needs so many car chases, gunshots, blood, death, and general mayhem? I am disappointed that people today are not only assumed to not be able to deal with intellectual material without dumb, violent, presumably hedonistic fodder, but worse, that this perception is correct, based on the reviews this movie is getting.
If you found this movie over the top and annoying try Moon and Primer, for recent examples of "intelligent" movies, the latter made for only a few thousand $.
The dreams were not dream-like, at least as I experience them. My dreams are much less about crumbling buildings but at the same time, way more mysterious and weird. Too much talking in this dream world. It's almost always more effective to let the imagery haunt the viewer rather than spell it all out (think about the diner scene in Mulholland Drive, truly chilling and dream-like)... They did not capture the dream mood at all IMO...
The ending was predictable from the very beginning. I sat there thinking "really? I thought this was supposed to do a mind-bender". Felt like a 14 year old read the wikipedia pages for Descartes, Plato and Aristotle while he's stoned and wrote this movie... Maybe it's not the movie's fault that media reports got my expectations geared towards a surprise ending... The ending is the most obvious thing that is possible in the context... I hope that doesn't ruin the movie for you!
Possible spoiler: BEGIN
Huge plot holes. Insults to your intelligence left and right. "Limbo" was such a cop-out. In one context (the job they're on), inception has to be super complicated (for no convincing reason), in another (Cobb & his wife) you simply tell someone something and there it is... Uneven mess.
To me the movie was the ramblings of a junkie, the whole entire thing was a "dream". They didn't do much with the drug seeking and addict behavior the characters displayed (girl gets hooked first time, Cobb guy's "doing it one last time"). If they layered that on, maybe it could have made it a bit more interesting. Minus the bomb and gunshot-fest though...
Possible spoiler: END
Finally, the other reason this fails: Who are these people and why do we care? Cobb is supposedly motivated by seeing his kids and cleaning up his act. Didn't work. I half expected the kids to have Rosemary's baby faces when they turned around (hell, it would have been a little bit dream-like, more so than all the annoying ski chases and such). I can't get engaged by flat characters no matter how many millions worth of CGI you pour on. The Matrix, a decidedly non-highbrow movie in this genre, had better developed characters.
For the record, we don't use a small percentage of our brains. I can't believe this movie blatantly put that cliché in there in the 21st century. Again... Now I have to explain this even more at random parties... Joy! (I am a neuroscientist)
Verdict: OK implementation of interesting idea (though not at all original). I wish I had not rewarded the studios who feel fine about spending millions on repetitive ideas implemented without grace, while the whole world is in the middle of a recession. Feels like Hollywood's too high on testosterone and cocaine these days...