Some interesting ideas, but overall unsatisfying

Rating: 6/10 (13 March 2015)

I have to begin this review by acknowledging that I saw this movie under less than optimal conditions - on the screen on the back of a Jet Blue seat. Whatever visual magic might have impressed me was grainy and small, and the sound was murky. There's a good chance I would have liked this film better if seen properly.
That being said, I probably wouldn't have liked it a *lot* better, because the things I didn't like would have been the same.
First off, I thought the movie was off to a real slow start. It was basically a dust bowl family saga, and while I'll admit you needed some context for what happens later, it felt like it went on much too long.
The early space experience also didn't engage me that much. Part of the problem might just be my expectations for a Christopher Nolan movie. I knew almost nothing about this film going in, but I think of Nolan as the director of Inception and Memento, and Interstellar was just so darn straightforward (at least at first).
Eventually (the movie is almost three hours, so it really takes its time) the film's more intriguing ideas appear, such as the trickiness of relative time. The movie also becomes more eventful. Yet still there were things I found offputting; the first death in the movie makes no sense; it shouldn't have happened, and realistically wouldn't have. (Later I read a critique that pointed out that the whole scene wouldn't have happened that way unless everyone involved was an idiot.)
The movie did, become more engrossing as it got more involved, playing with its time concept and tossed in some interesting twists and suspenseful moments.
Alas, whatever gains the movie had made in my heart were squandered in the end. Apparently the movie had a scientist to make sure the science was good, and perhaps it was, yet to me the final part seemed incredibly silly, with way too much leaning on non-science things like intuition. And the last scenes were just .... huh? (Although someone in the IMDb board came up with a very Christopher Nolan interpretation of the end that I found more appealing.)
As I say, if I'd seen it on the big screen I might have been more forgiving of its flaws, and it's very possible things like the reportedly hardcore seriousness with which it approached getting the look of a black hole just right would have made its length and plot weaknesses more palatable. But even saying that, I cannot see any way this movie would ever impress me as much as it has others.