Very disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (20 March 2015)

First of all, I was really looking forward to Interstellar. First few months I somewhat regret not going to theater and see it, but definitely not anymore. Interstellar has to be one of the biggest letdowns in recent memory. I was expecting intelligent scifi, beautiful locales and effects and witness the awe of deep space. Instead I got a dragging, confusing and altogether overlong movie. During the first hour I was already in belief that I wasn't watching the same movie I was going to. It was about a father-daughter relationship, which could be OK if situated in space (Ripley and her daughter/Newt was written brilliantly) but here it happened in Midwest cornfields. The characters were farmers, it's understandable, but I quickly learned that the whole world's population has supposedly turned into farming. Yeah right. Still conveniently the father (McConaughey) used to pilot for Nasa as well, and when he suddenly finds out a hidden Nasa base, he is instantly asked to fly a spaceship into space. Just like that. He even admitted that he hasn't been in space and hasn't even flown in about ten years. No wonder the US government won't support Nasa if they make such ridiculous decisions.
When Interstellar finally speed warps us into space (as like the tech stuff was less important than witnessing crops die for almost an hour) we get mostly unimpressive scenery and effects. Only thing I liked in the movie, visually that is, was the black hole from distance. Beautiful. Other that that, bland, boring, uninteresting. The two planets they landed were so empty and barren, almost like early computerized, wired virtual worlds that had nothing in there. If either of these would be mankind's future home, I would rather die on Earth. I mean come on, water world with only two feet deep water and a mile high tidal waves. Sure there was a black hole nearby, that would have a huge gravitational pull, like a million times stronger than our Moon. But in that case, wouldn't it be clear that this planet is not habitable? The crew even had to carefully calculate the trajectory to land there. Otherwise they would have sucked into black hole, like I think would happen to the planet also in not too distant future. It's not like it's a star that has matching gravitational pull to stay there. Heck, Earth doesn't even have enough pull to prevent the Moon from escaping some day.
Technologies aside the character development was just lazy. McConaughey wasn't very convincing as a man who was going to save the world. He was more believable as a farmer that had a hobby of flying miniature airplanes and snatching drones. Hathaway looked like she was lost during most of the movie. Her relationship with the other characters was non existent. I felt sorry for Romilly, because he had to wait for 20 years for others to return from water planet, and meanwhile they were basically just lallygagging down there. Mann at first seemed like a decent guy but suddenly wen't berserk for no reason, considering he was in cryo most of the time (I would have expected that from Romilly). The same can be said of prof Brand. He seriously must have been insane to come up with a covert operation like that to send their supposedly best men to a one-way trip through a wormhole. The robot was maybe the worst design ever. At first I didn't even notice to whom Cooper was talking to after he was caught lurking outside the Nasa base. Tars looked like a wall with a display in it, and suddenly when it moved I was in disbelief. In all sense I would expect it to have been clumsy and impossible to maneuver but it rotated and morphed into whatever form when necessary. C-3PO had human shape but it's movement was intentionally limited to appear as a believable robot.
I think Nolan and co were too inspired by 2001:Space Odyssey that they tried to recreate something visually as epic but never managed to do so. It's like they weren't even trying. I guess Hollywood studios must have a database for stock space model designs and textures that Nolan used, because the creativity was lacking big time. I recently watched a Blu-Ray version of 2001:Space Odyssey and was still blown away by the visuals, and that's something made almost five decades ago. Also there wasn't much going on in the audio department, just a lot of LF effects. Audio-visually Gravity was superior, and Contact was better written and it's wormhole effect nicely executed.
The ending was surprising, but thinking it afterwards it makes even less sense. Like the movie as a whole. Cooper meeting his descendants and his daughter felt awkward, as no one in the room seemed to care who he was. So why should I?
I really liked Inception. It was a scifi movie about dreams. I don't known what Interstellar really is. A realistic space movie it is not, that is for certain. A scifi maybe? No, too boring. A drama then? Perhaps, if you can stomach it.