Great Concept, Narrative Lacking

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2010)

Let me start by saying that I thought Inception was an amazing concept, highly creative, and visually stunning.
I found the dialog, however, to be too shallow, literal, and over-saturated with exposition to drive the plot. There was no subtext to anything anyone said, very little character development of anyone but Leo's character, and I found myself not really caring about any of them more than I would a stranger in a tough situation. I've heard people say that Nolan is the new Kubrick. I would have to agree if I were judging him based on Inception alone. His combination of great-concept-little-character-development does mirror 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Dr. Strangelove, where all the main characters are just out of reach.
But looking at Nolan's past works like Memento and The Dark Knight, I wouldn't say the same thing, as the relationship dynamics in these two films were rich with layers and subtext. He also had other writers helping him with these films, whereas he was the sole writer on Inception. Maybe he shouldn't be flying solo as a writer yet. Amazing director, creative thinker, needs to work on creating more sophisticated dialog and developing interesting varied characters through character-defining decisions and how their decisions reflect/don't reflect their words. One character making one big decision at the end isn't enough to make up for 2 hours of shallow dialog.