Good but not Great

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2014)

I am a huge fan of Christopher Nolan's movies and I was especially excited to see Interstellar. However, when the almost 3 hour space epic was done, I was not blown away. I found it to be a visually exciting film with excellent performances and suspenseful sequences but I left the theater with the feeling that something was missing. Interstellar is an almost great science fiction but it has too many elements, especially with the plot that just don't hold up with a little scrutiny. We are told that this is an earth sometime in the not too distant future that is dying and the reason has something to do with blight on the worlds food supply. Yet visually all we see are dust storms. We are told wheat is gone, yet there are several scenes of characters sitting on their porch drinking what looks like a beer. This made me wonder what they made the beer from. In other words it took me out of the film. In another scene as Matthew McConaughey's character is driving his kids to school a drone flies by overhead and he immediately whips out his laptop and some sort of device which enables him to take control of the drone. Really? Grant that it's the future, he is an engineer and an ex Nasa pilot, would he really be driving around with his drone catching equipment in the back of beat up pick up now that he's a farmer? The sequence is expertly put together and Nolan knows how to keep the audience engaged but it's a matter of style over substance without balancing the two. The next stretch comes when McConaughey and his daughter are caught breaking into the super top secret Nasa base, where it just so happens they are looking for a pilot to lead their next mission into space. I think we have all seen this one before. Granted, it is heart wrenching when McConaughey leaves his family and Nolan does a fine job of handling the space crews interactions. A wormhole has been discovered outside of Saturn's orbit and the Nasa scientists believe "someone" is trying to help us. However, no one especially considers the question. If you had the ability to create a wormhole to help the earth, why would you put it so far away? Perhaps these mystery E.T.s want us to earn it. We learn that a mission was mounted to the wormhole where 12 possible planets were detected and of the 12, 3 are possible new homes for the human race. Now unless those E.T.s are real jokers, why would they present us with 12 options, instead of just opening the other end of the wormhole to the best planet? None the less, McConaughey, leads his crew to the wormhole in sequences that are reminiscent of 2001:A Space Odyssey. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But, unlike Kubrick's film which has rock solid logic because of its ambiguity, by explaining too much Nolan removes the viewer from the experience. i don't want to describe the surprises that happen in the last third of the film but it ties together nicely right up till McConaughey enters a black hole. Without revealing too much the inevitable spaghettification which would occur to any matter entering a black hole never happens to Matt (Although his spaceship breaks up.) It appears the E.T.s can do anything. Look, I know it may seem like I am trashing the movie but I hold Mr. Nolan to a higher standard and he falls short here. I really wanted to love it, I only liked it.