Boring, inconsistent and pointless

Rating: 1/10 (5 January 2011)

I was really looking forward to watching this movie after all the positive reviews, the incredibly high IMDb rating and the raving of several friends who had seen it.
I will point out that I liked The Matrix, Memento, Batman Begins and the Dark Knight (although this last movie is quite overrated on IMDb). I also understood the plot of Inception from the start and never had any trouble following what was happening so it's not that I didn't "get it".
Inception is NOT a great movie and not even a very good one. The plot is not very clever or inventive contrary to what many IMDb raters have suggested and there are no interesting or surprising twists.
The characters are poorly developed and, as the viewer, I didn't really care what happened to them. There are no true "bad guys" to root against (all the bad guys are just "bad" dreams) and there is no real desire to see the "good guys" succeed because the object of the entire plot seems irrelevant (implant a thought in some guy's head so he will break up his father's corporation... I kid you not!).
The fact that everything happens in dreams removes the sense of danger and risk from all the action and makes it seem like a pointless video game, which is what several of the dreams appear to be anyway... unimaginative and repetitive. Are all Nolan's dreams just "shoot'em up" video games? The attack of the hospital/mountain fortress was as bad as it gets... looked like a CGI sequence from Medal of Honor/Call of Duty.
It was also infuriating to me that the rules of the dream universes are inconsistent. Creating an imaginary situation where normal rules don't apply is OK as long as the alternate universe functions according to logical rules, but in this movie the rules are constantly bent to accommodate the needs of the director.
A few examples:
The top is supposed to be an indication to Mal that she is in "her own dream" if the top spins forever because she has made it that way... If she is in someone else's dream then the top will topple since they don't know that in her dreams the top spins forever. So how does that indicate to Dom/the viewer that he is/is not in a dream/reality in the end scene?... but wow, that is sooo deep.
How did finding the top in the safe allow Dom to "incept" Mal with the idea that she was in a dream and needed to return to reality? No explanation... but wow, that is sooo deep.
In dream No.1 the van falls off the bridge causing weightlessness in dream No.2 - meaning that non-physical events (it's a dream) of a certain kind(?) carry through between dream layers. In dream No.2 the sleeping characters become weightless but somehow this state does not carry through to layer No.3 and No.4... but it's a dream anyway so who cares if it makes sense?
Why do you need a "kick" in each layer to wake up the characters? if weightlessness carries through the layers the "kick" would logically also carry through... If there was some logic to the rule wouldn't it be that only actual physical events in the real world carry through to the dreams? But in your dream you are aware that there is another reality - which is really another dream - so you dream that can feel the effects of the other dream although you are asleep and unaware of what's going on... but wow, that is sooo deep.
If a character is asleep in the first layer of a dream he does not know what is happening to him after he has fallen asleep thus would have no reason to dream that he is becoming weightless in layer two as he sleeps through the falling van dream... but wow, that is sooo deep.
Since the wake-up "kicks" are supposed to come through sensation in the inner ear and the "kicks" are not real but dreams, then I have to conclude that the inner ear must "dream" that it senses the imaginary kicks, which makes no sense at all... but wow, that is sooo deep.
So as you analyze the logic behind the dream rules you must conclude that the entire movie is just a dream (a nightmare) where no logic applies or that the "dream rules" are just nonsense and the whole movie is a pretext for stringing together a bunch of unrelated "cool" action sequences and special effects to make a massive Hollywood "pseudo-intellectual" blockbuster junk movie.
This movie was an even the greater disappointment considering that I was anticipating something better than "The Matrix" or "The Sixth Sense". The IMDb rating of 9+ is incomprehensible, this should rate in the 6.0-7.0 range. The rating must reflect a large number of users getting confused and rating it as a video game.
As for those who say the number of positive votes/reviews indicate it is a great movie I think you could likewise argue for McDonald's being the best food in the world.
I rated it a very harsh 1.0 only to help bring the IMDb rating back to earth. It is however a very mediocre movie.