great father/daughter movie for scientists/engineers

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2014)

Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for bringing another great science-based father/daughter movie into being. As an engineer with a pre-teenage daughter, I am grateful to have wonderfully entertaining films like Interstellar and Contact with which, for a brief time, I can pull my little one away from her literary world of magic and Greek gods and into my world of science and technology.
It did not feel like a three hour movie. At no point was I not completely involved in what was unfolding in front of me. To make a long film hold the audience's interest, director Nolan and composer Zimmer have done an outstanding job. I had read that the soundtrack was too loud and covered up much dialog. I did not find that to be the case, and I am hard of hearing.
Jessica Chastain (adult Murph) was not believable to me as a scientist. I work surrounded by engineers and scientists, and they rarely display uninhibited emotion. Instead, you see a lot more thinking going in their eyes when they are conversing -- sort of like they are occasionally looking away at a computer screen. Hollywood actors really need to do some on-site research with mathematicians and physicists before taking on a role like this. Jody Foster did a much more believable job as a scientist in "Contact". Mackenzie Foy (as young Murph) was better than Chastain, but still lacked some of the credibility of Jena Malone (young Ellie Arroway) in Contact.
There were the usual scientific problems with the film, but most of that can be forgiven. They did get a lot of it right, and it was gratifying to have the issues of relative time and gravity dealt with in a film for the mass audience. Most importantly for me, I had assumed that the premise of the Earth's demise as a life-sustaining planet would be blamed on overpopulation, overconsumption, or the latest bugaboo, Global Warming. It was not. And, to top off that last slight to pseudo-science, the only evil character in the film was obviously meant to ridicule Michael Mann (of the infamous "Hockey Stick" temperature chart). Dr Mann (the character) has to convince Earth's scientists that his frozen planet is actually warm, or otherwise he will be left there for eternity. The real Dr Mann has to convince Earth's politicians that our planet is warming, or otherwise he will be left in obscurity. A laugh-out-loud moment for me during the film.