It lacked "the willing suspension of disbelief" that good movies produce.

Rating: 5/10 (14 December 2010)

There were only a handful of moments throughout "Inception" where I didn't feel like I was watching actors going through the motions of a plot too complex for them to keep track of during filming. I imagined the directorial staff telling them: "Hey you, run over here, then turn around that way.....just do it, don't ask why right now!"
I don't think DiCaprio was very well cast. He can be intense, but often comes off like a teenager posing as an adult. This role called for someone more eccentric with a mysterious presence. Likewise, the architect girl seemed like she belonged in high school, though she was nice to look at.
The plot had a good premise but it barely got me involved psychologically. After the first hour or so, the layers of complexity got ahead of themselves and erased any real feeling of suspense. You need a decent grasp of what's actually going on to feel suspense. Due to the lack of focus, I found my eyes straying to things like the Joliesque bump on the wife's forehead, etc. A good film doesn't let the mind wander.
After a point, this thing became so convoluted that I was trying to figure out how it was made (on a technical level) rather than putting serious effort into following the plot. Yes, I got the gist of the dream layers and the general plan, but the timing of the "kicks" became too hard to follow.
I spent half my viewing time wondering why dreams, which in real life contain random absurdities, could be so precise, down to the timing of bombs. These dreams never seemed like ones I've experienced, so the main premise of the movie was "kicked" out the door early on. Technology- wise, it seems highly unlikely that people could share dreams except for random electrical pulses.
Maybe it played better in a big theater with the crowd adding to the substantial hype that preceded it. I saw it at home on Blu-ray and it just didn't fire me up. I even considered turning it off twice, but the very end was clever enough to make it worth the slog.