Interstellar Underdrive

Rating: 4/10 (28 August 2018)

I understand that director / producer Christopher Nolan was reaching for a sort of genre-busting, cross-cultural, auteur-imprint sci-fi blockbuster like "2001" or "Close Encounters" and so establish himself in the cinematic firmament alongside the likes of Kubrick and Spielberg. Well I'll start by saying that those two particular films are far from my favourites by Stan and Steve and that I struggled to maintain my interest throughout this very long, very sciency movie.
It takes an age to get going for one thing, over-developing in my opinion, the relationships between widower Matthew McConaughey, his grounded, land-loving son and reach-for-the-sky genius daughter, at the same time, establishing his own credentials as a brilliant maverick space-pilot, setting us up for the meeting with old prof Michael Caine in another predictable feet-under-the-bed casting by Nolan and his eco-warrior daughter, played by Anne Hathaway, where he learns of the secret plan to reach out to other worlds for possible solutions to the dust-storm crisis on our earth which if unchecked will see the planet's extinction.
And so McConnaughey, Hathaway and their small band of brothers hop on a big space rocket to seek out the three most promising of the twelve missions previously undertaken to this end but the only meaningful encounter they have is with Matt Damon's stranded scientist. After an Apollo 13-like miraculous return to Earth, McConaughey gets all discombobulated in the space time continuum as he tries to go back to the original moment he left his daughter to leave her a message to save all the future bother. This circular-time folding-back-on-itself skit has been done before more than once (I can even remember it in a Harry Potter film), thus reducing its effectiveness for me at the climax and whilst I can otherwise see Nolan projecting big issues like faith, forgiveness, guilt, hope, survival, family and of course love, I found the film to be slow-moving and clunky in construction.
I wasn't engaged by the main characters and frankly got lost in all the science too while as regards the acting Caine and Damon are badly miscast in my opinion and as for the android which looks like a clothes peg and all that Dylan Thomas "Do Not Go Gentle..." guff - we all know it's a great poem anyway.
Of course it may just be me remembering my thoughts on its two big-name antecedents but if people out there want to put this on a similar level to those they can be my guest. Not my type of film perhaps but then Nolan didn't do anything like enough here to change my preconceptions either.