Entertaining but flawed

Rating: 6/10 (22 January 2015)

I thought this film was very watchable and entertaining. At times it's brilliant but at other times it's cringeworthy. Some of the dialogue and forced conversations were straight out of a B Movie. What really bothered me though is that there are some extremely technical conversations that make no sense to the average person and they go on for 5 minutes. At other times there is no explanation for what is happening and I sat there frowning and wondering what was going on. But then some of the obvious plot points were massively over-explained. And then there's the glaring plot holes. Matthew Mcconaughey finds a secret NASA base near his house and when they find out he used to be a space pilot they ask him to fly their new mission for them. So a day later he's on his way into space after a quick "see ya kids". This gave the screenwriter the opportunity to use him as the dumbo who constantly asks his crew mates what's going on. I mean, how on earth did a trained NASA pilot not know anything about black holes or wormholes? Don't even get me started on the bit where Matt Damon showed up. Overall this has some magnificent special effects, a few great moments of tension and emotion and some smart plot twists. But because it's all played out so seriously it makes the glaring mistakes stand out. It's like watching the last ever episode of the 70's Battlestar Galactica "The Return of Starbuck", but at least that show knew it was a bit of fun. This takes itself very seriously, but it has a talking robot in it that looks like a vending machine. Nuff said.