Interesting but not great

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2010)

I saw the movie this past weekend and am questioning whether I saw the same movie as some of the previous reviewers who have showered the film with the word "masterpiece" and the like.
First, the positives: It is very clever and complex. Nolan's creativity and intelligence is apparent in both the storyline and script. It is incredibly well-filmed - the visuals were stunning. One of the fight scenes in zero-gravity was amazing. Marion Cotillard was well cast - she gave a great performance. Gordon-Levitt's and Tom Hardy's characters and performances were also likable. The ambiguous ending was very à propos for the movie and made me smile.
On the list of negatives: The length - this movie was way too long. There were many needless scenes - especially of people fighting without being able to tell who was fighting whom. It was as if the director was given a lot of money and couldn't figure out how to spend it all so he just added more more more. That "more" didn't add anything to the storyline - it just became a loud, blurry mess of concurrent fights and chases. The cuts back to the van falling interminably off the bridge got to the point of torture - and not the good "edge-of-your-seat" type. We get it...the various levels of the dreams happen at different speeds - continuing to show the van falling became annoying, not informative. The movie could have easily lost 30 mins of running time without affecting the narrative in any way.
Ellen Page - it is very hard to take her seriously. She is one-note actress with no gravitas or credibility and was poorly miscast in a role that required someone with depth.
The explanations of what was happening (subconscious projections, why characters stare, etc) sometimes left me thinking "huh?" Nolan got a little too clever at times which distracted from being able to enjoy the movie. I was left wondering what the heck they were saying.
DiCaprio was his usual self - not good, not bad. Bland, unmemorable. He doesn't do anything really wrong - he's just vanilla in everything he does. You never forget that it's Leonardo DiCaprio when you're watching his movies. It is interesting that this movie and DiCaprio's last one - Shutter Island - had very similar themes for his character - issues with a dead wife haunting his thoughts - not knowing what was real or not - wanting to see his kids again but not being able to. I felt as though I had seen all this from "Inception" before in another movie. It wasn't any more interesting the second time around.
I would recommend this movie for the originality and the way it was filmed. I would recommend that you take a blanket and pillow - you're in for the long haul.