mis-inception

Rating: 2/10 (17 July 2010)

MANY SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!One of the main problems with this movie is that it explicates certain directives important to planting ideas and then the movie doesn't follow them. In one scene, Gordon-Levitt is shooting at some bad guys, then Hardy comes over and says, "Dream bigger," and pulls out a grenade launcher. This, coupled with Page's manipulation of the dream early on, seems to indicate that there is power to change what is in the dream. Yet when the van is under attack, the driver only has a crappy pistol. Seriously? What about the directive that an idea has to be simple enough to seem that it springs from the subject's own mind, otherwise they will know its true genesis lies outside them. But the filmmakers steal from many films and don't think the audience will recognize their genesis. People have already mentioned Paprika, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the Matrix. But there is also in the Cobb/Moll storyline a lot taken from What Dreams May Come. Plus there are Escher stairs that turn into Harry Potter stairs. Personally, even with the hours (felt like) of explication the film did, I never understood how they actually shared dreams. They get wired into a dream? I thought the tube was for what the chemist mixed. How does that allow the dream to be shared? And limbo? Seriously? What a cop out. You remove something that made sense (you die, you wake up) and turn it into ridiculousness--now you're shoved down into pure subconscious and you can't really survive there b/c your brains become scrambled. Yikes. There was plenty more that was problematic, but others here have covered or, I'm sure, will cover that, too. This movie would have been better if it hadn't tried to do so much. Again the trailers were misleading and I thought the plot was going to focus on the ins/outs of many dreams/dreamers. More than a waste of money, it was a waste of time.