Awesome science fiction trapped in an awful script

Rating: 4/10 (27 January 2016)

Interstellar is a visually stunning film containing the most realistic depictions of astronomical objects such as wormholes and black holes ever shown in a film, through in- depth input from Professor Kip Thorne. Most of the acting performances are very strong, and the set design of the spaceships and alien planets are great. For those reasons alone it's worth a look, but there are some problems. Before I get into spoilers, one of the main issues is pace. The film is just too long, and in particular it takes an age to get off Earth and into space. We came here for Sci-fi, the film's called Interstellar, c'mon, how about some rockets 'n stuff? It also feels too long because the film is a checklist of every major astronomical concept ever filmed - black holes, neutron stars, wormholes, time dilation and more besides. Some simplification would have made for a better story.
From here on there are spoilers.
The entire plot is based on an obvious causality paradox. Matthew McConaughey's character is an astronaut turned farmer who is given the coordinates of a secret NASA base by a future version of himself, enabling him to travel to the base and be accepted into the NASA team. Only the fact that he found the base enabled him to travel into space and ultimately send this message back to his earlier self.
That's not the only problem with the plot by a long way, though. While engaged in a race to save humanity, the characters waste 23 years traveling to a planet orbiting a black hole, where the theory of relativity states time is passing much more slowly. The purpose of the trip is to establish whether the planet is a suitable replacement Earth for humanity. At no point do they attempt to assess the planet from orbit (where all of it could be seen, without losing 23 years of Earth-time) but must instead visit the surface (presumably to see what a couple of square miles looks like). This ends in the death of one astronaut and the finding that the planet is no good. It's as if none of the characters have noticed that they are in a spaceship literally covered in windows. Also, the beacon saying "everything's great here" that they went to investigate turned out to be just a series of echoes of the initial signal it sent before being destroyed. So they were unable to predict that possibility despite clearly having a full understanding of relativistic physics, and their beacons aren't programmed to include a time stamp or any form of ID number. People this stupid deserve everything they get...
At the next planet they discover that the earlier human explorer sent there (don't worry, the script includes a ridiculous explanation of why a dozen astronauts were sent to their near- certain deaths rather than using unmanned probes) turns out to be falsely sending out "come visit, it's good here" signals because he wants to be rescued. So the mission was designed in complete ignorance of the human instinct for self-preservation and how that could ruin everything. People this stupid deserve everything they get...
In a movie that markets itself on how good and realistic its science is, we are put through some cringe making dialogue about how love is quantifiable, conquers all and will save us in the end. Anakin and Padme made me want to vomit less than that scene.
Towards the end, the lead character falls into a black hole in an act of self-sacrifice. Then there are a few obvious winks to the audience designed to hint that nobody really knows what laws of physics apply inside a black hole, and then it turns out that inside black holes the last ten minutes of 2001 A Space Odyssey are being endlessly ripped off for all eternity, except with more deus ex machina. The small problem with this is that the lead character would be dead long before he got inside the Event Horizon, so...
And after that, the black hole spits him out in some new, unexplained, convenient way to a region of space that just happens to be a short hop away from a space station where he can be rescued in time to meet his now-elderly daughter who saved humanity by building space stations that in no way rely on his heroic actions. And when he gets there to meet the daughter he left aged 10, who now has children and grandchildren of her own while he has not aged a year, none of them are interested, and she sends him away. The last ten minutes of the film are both redundant and stupid.
All in all, Interstellar is a beautiful, well acted, engaging, interesting film let down by a plot so weak you'll feel like you're watching a moron's idea of an intelligent movie.