Interminable

Rating: 7/10 (22 March 2015)

I'm never too fussed with realism or realistic special effects in movies – after all, similar to millions of other people I only watched a two-dimensional series of images under Persistence Of Vision on a flat screen telly in a corner of my front room tonight. I wasn't actually "there" or wanted to be either and I have no intention of reading Einstein or praising or dissing him afterwards either. I wouldn't even bother to create a loop by promising not to denigrate with a So What that this apparently was a film produced and finished on film too.
It's a 21st century cgi cartoon update on When Worlds Collide which was a much artier and worthier film than 2001, with a nod to Close Encounters and its breathtaking nonsense taken for sage symbolism again. Convoluted plans coalesce to populate foreign countries, sorry, galaxies as the Earth or at least the American Midwest is slowly dying. It involves going through a Saturnian wormhole in much the same style as a Cosmic Pinball Wizard picking from a list of possible habitations given to "Us" by "Them", whoever that lot were. Oodles of human schmaltz is ladled on the concoction for good measure as a counterpoint to inter-dimensional gobbledygook to ensure some people's eyes don't glaze over. A few points: Playing Love Is All Around instead may save a lot of time for impatient people; director Christopher Nolan used grizzled Michael Caine yet again, he must be a really big pal; Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet seemed incredibly dexterous and more anthropomorphic in comparison to the clunky TARS & Co. on display as AI in here; on that bloody icy planet cool customer Matt Damon certainly had his plans well laid for saying he didn't expect to be ever opened up again; I ask again why is it so fashionable to growl and grunt colloquial dialogue in guttural whispers – I don't expect everyone, or anyone for that matter to be up to Laurence Olivier's standard of diction but we're not all Kings Of Leon fans; somewhat flat when it finally came the long expected but still creepy farewell between father and daughter! The money shots for me were the emotional and fraught Lander craft re-docking with the Endurance scenes, however it was taken so slowly I thought for a while Anne Hathaway had fainted. The cartoonery is routinely spectacular, at eye-cutting edge.
Basically: as with Inception this involves a huge leap of faith from the er well-grounded but unwary viewer; get over it and it's entertaining hokum to be watched with a tesseract of salt – I switched on, switched off and enjoyed it. Way too long though, it seemed to last decades.