A Movie That Thinks It's More IMPORTANT Than It Is

Rating: 1/10 (5 April 2015)

If you thought Prometheus was ground-breaking, thoughtful, scientifically-plausible sci-fi, you will love this. This is another hollow, vapid "sci-fi" flick written by people who obviously don't love the category. They're so busy trying to explain everything, as if they're embarrassed by the very concepts they're presenting and don't want to be considered "out there" and still want to hang with the cool kids.
There are so many incredibly & laughably stupid and boring moments and decisions in this movie, that it is very hard to resist the urge to describe them verbatim. Understand, this is also hard to accomplish when the whole movie is staggered, Jenga-like, on plot twists.
I consider Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige to be Nolan's best films. Inception was overwrought and over-hyped, but enjoyable. I thoroughly enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises, even though aware of serious plot holes and a borderline-excessive runtime.
For me, Interstellar is the worst of Inception (thinks it's more clever and important than it really is) and the worst of Dark Knight Rises (excessive runtime and damaging plot holes), without the fun or grounding of either.
From its overdone, overlong opening on Earth, those 40+ minutes make you wonder how a movie named "Interstellar" is ever going to get into space. McConaughey as Cooper is a former NASA astronaut, now just a farmer trying to sustain his crops, son and daughter in a near-future Earth wherein the planet is dying from a not-well-explained or illustrated depopulation and blight. It doesn't help anything that the actor has recently made those embarrassing Lincoln commercials and then to see him talking 'deeply' while driving a truck.
Right from the outset, within mere minutes, the only thought that runs through one's mind is: Has Nolan forgotten how to edit his films? Seriously, the whole first quarter or third of the movie is just a very contrived setup for the space adventure that follows.
As I stated, it's hard to be more-specific about the movie, and even certain characters and stars, without revealing key plot points. Cooper's daughter, Murphy, is a critical element of the story, as is the family home and (don't ask) the bookcase in her room. But, as much as the movie (or its makers) thinks that you're never going to figure out all of its secrets, they're actually quite obvious (if preposterous) just by knowing that everything is predicated on plot twists.
There are some interesting moments when things move into space, and some scenes that resonate regarding the expansive loss of time (relative to that experienced on Earth) for the 4 travelers on a mission to find a new home. But, that connection those scenes make with the viewer are nearly instantly lost because they are nearly all intertwined with stupid writing decisions. Why only 4 travelers? How could they possibly have enough fuel to travel to so many places when earlier expeditions made 1-way trips to only 1 place? Why would the crew split-up unevenly? Why wouldn't Earth send 2 women and 2 men instead of 3 men and 1 woman, when there's a chance they won't be able to return? At least, in a worst-case scenario, if all survived, and they did find a sustainable planet that they couldn't return from, they'd be evenly-paired and (if 1 woman had medical issues) they'd have a better chance to sustain the species.
You might think I'm nitpicking on this, but I assure you: this is something the movie itself gets you actively thinking about (species propagation) because of the "Plan B" option of the mission. (Yes, it is referred to as such in the movie.) Perhaps, most crushing to a real sci-fi fan, the film plays extremely loose with physics and depicts worlds which are made less-interesting than they first appear. With the ice world, in particular, there is a concept about its construction which is suggested...gets your imagination running beyond what you're seeing with the special effects, and then that cool vision is very shortly robbed from you.
And that, perhaps, is this movie's worst crime: Robbery. It robs you of your time, which is excessive but would be forgivable if it didn't also rob you of your soul and your imagination. Unlike a masterpiece of cinema like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which opens your mind and lets you ponder what is happening, Interstellar never misses a chance to tell you EXACTLY what it wants you to believe. Even to the very most revealing parts of the end. And, that the movie dares to suggest an opportunity for a continuance of the story...I'm sorry, this film was only slightly more intelligent and entertaining than the dreadful Transformers: Age of Extinction. As preposterous as that may sound, Interstellar is clearly cut from the same 'blockbuster cloth', without as much mindless action. As imperfect as Oblivion and Elysium were, they were at least attempts at "thinking man's sci-fi". This is really just a very flimsy father/daughter love story wrapped over to hide a bunch of sci-fi nonsense that its own producers were self-consciously embarrassed of.
...And then there are the robots. --The most inexplicable, ridiculously-designed robots ever to grace sci-fi cinema. There is a moment, in a scene set in a shallow ocean, where we suddenly see the full capabilities of the robots, but it plays a bit like R2-D2 actually having booster jets in the Star Wars prequels, but never having or using them in the chronologically-later movies. If you do torture yourself by watching the Blu-ray, have an extra laugh by watching the making-of documentary on how they articulated these implausible robots using practical effects.