Full of Sound and Fury...

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2014)

It's hard to totally pan this film despite being pretty let down by it. There's a lot of really cool stuff that feels like trumped up scenes from "Wonders of the Universe" on the Science channel. As a science geek, that stuff is great. The first planet visited is brilliantly portrayed, a water world ravaged by enormous tidal waves. Got my sense of wonder tingling something serious.
What's more, there are some real "get you in the feels" moments, particularly spurred on by some really heavy work put in by Matthew McConaughey. His emotion is palpable as a viewer, causing me to explain to my wife that I just had some dust in my eyes a few times. Unfortunately, he's basically the only one who I cared about. Even forgiving the awkward injection of basic relativity discussions into conversations between individuals that are supposed to be top in their field, though, the film's dialogue is plainly dull. The characters speak in clichÃ©s. At times it feels much closer to a college dorm room after a spliff than discussions between the most brilliant minds that mankind has to offer. Interstellar still fails to engage emotionally. The father-daughter love bond fails to illicit feels because the Murphy character is just so hostile and unlikable, not to mention wildly selfish. Dr. Mann is like a comic villain. McConaughey does as much as any human could with the role and certainly deserves recognition for his portrayal, but it all falls flat because of poor writing.
Explaining away some of more more ostensibly paradoxical chicken-and-egg stuff by employing multiple time lines, the science is also ultimately pedestrian. I hate myself for even phrasing it that way, but Nolan did not attempt to leave anything up to the viewer. There is nothing deeper here because it's all so spelled-out. I was really hoping for something thought-provoking to chew on. I'm sorry, but "love" is not a natural force I want to see discussed in a film, and most definitely not as explicitly as it was in Interstellar. It's like the PG-13 rating was used to guide the script. Inception at least gave the audience a shred of credit. Nolan would perhaps be wise to give his audience the benefit of the doubt. It might result in some dim bulbs complaining out of the gate, but ultimately would result in films that stand the test of time, which Interstellar surely will not.