Good, but worth the hype?

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2010)

I have mixed feelings about Inception. Watching it I knew I was watching something that was very well crafted, superbly acted and cleverly written. I watched it intently and closely because I had heard that it was a tough one to follow, that it could get confusing and that, for a summer blockbuster, it demanded a lot from its audience.
I honestly don't know what all the fuss was about, maybe I just have some sort enormous brain (which I highly doubt) but I thought everything was fairly self explanatory. Each dream level was clearly recognisable and despite it being a tense, action packed film at no point did I feel the plot itself was moving too quickly for me. In fact I felt very little and that is the main problem with this film, I guess in that way it was a bit like a Kubrick movie (although even his best had characters you gave two hoots about), I knew or felt as much as I ever was going to about DiCaprio's character at the beginning of the flick as I did at the end and as for the rest of the characters I didn't learn their stories, motivations or ambitions. Nothing at all. There were, as there is bound to be in a movie like this, glaring plot holes once you took a step back from it and thought about it for a moment and a bunch of times where they needed to get the rules straight. I find I can go on any kind of surreal or fantastical journey as long as the rules are well established first, this tends to go for sci-fi films featuring inter- dimensional or time travel, but in Inception I felt like they made up rules as they went along and as they were needed which hindered its believability.
However I am probably being far too critical about this, it was an expertly made, tense action drama. It was well acted with a suitably booming and exaggerated soundtrack and, people are right, for a summer blockbuster it certainly had a bit more going for it than your usual robots fighting ghost cgi pirates remake sequel movie. I just won't be in a hurry to watch it again.
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