A Film Feigning Importance

Rating: 3/10 (10 November 2014)

Somewhere on the path to juxtaposing the story of the imminent death by starvation of humanity on Earth against a desperate search for a new planetary home (hopefully to not similarly despoil), the authors of "Interstellar" forgot to consider the audience and instead created a far too long, far too arcane and far too pet film. "Interstellar" is a kissin' cousin to the equally pet, pseudo mind-blowing, con man sleight-of-hand "Inception."
A bitter taste is left in the mouth by a self-satisfied script constantly trumpeting a specialness that, alas, is not at all special.
Audiences have been beat to death by the tropes, plot elements and dialogue seen so many times before. For example, the "Pursued By Demons Retired ______ Forced Back Into Service" trope.
Women, as in most films, are relegated to the back of the bus. When will writers and filmmakers wake up to the richness in woman's hearts and minds - even a cold scientist's ticker and noggin?
Face-down-death awaits the character with the fewest lines and closeup. (Much like the Bic 'Red Shirts' in "Star Trek" you knew would never make it to the end credits.)
An intelligent young woman becomes hysterical because Daddy's leaving, yet her intellect does not grasp his mission is important: To save her and the rest of the world. Beside, Daddy didn't explain, at least not on camera.
Matt Damon resurrects from hypersleep to wreak havoc as in the hackneyed "Don't Astronauts on "The Twilight Zone" Pass Basic Psych Tests?" plot element.
Don't forget the Dead Wife and Wise Grandpa tropes.
Wonder is non-existent. That's quite a feat as few films have led us through a wormhole. "Black Hole" did a better job. At least the mysterious passage in Disney's opus didn't suggest injection into a globule borrowed from the coda of "2001: A Space Odyssey." (Also cobbed from Kubrick's masterpiece are the more human than humans (articulated) computers.)
Cinematic corn served warm with a schmear of butter is quite delicious. Corn served cold by trying-too-hard actors sittin' on the porch waxin' philosophical is a dish best passed to the person sitting on your right.
There are nonsensical interviews of dust storm survivors who describe what the special effects department has just shown. There's no lack of understanding why the run time is 169 minutes. The dogged determination to not self-edit and lose script pages underscores either Nolan's lack of being a good audience or not caring about audiences - the latter a quality indicative of too many contemporary filmmakers.
The ending leads to head scratching that, in another film, would elicit laughs from the audience. Poltergeists my patootie!
"Interstellar" veers uncomfortably close to complete train wreck, but there are a few nice touches. While derivative, the articulated computers are cool. That mankind can solve mankind's problems without an advanced alien intelligence, God or other deus ex machina is the one original idea - and it's a good one.
Save very few elements to recommend it, "Interstellar" is a really, really long bore pretending importance. There's nothing worse than films of that ilk.