Far too long and self-important

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2014)

Weather stuff is messing up crops on Earth, and we're all going to suffocate from too much nitrogen. Secret NASA is exploring potentially habitable worlds via a wormhole provided by 5 dimensional aliens, and ace pilot Cooper goes on one such exploratory mission despite the pleas of his daughter for him not to. The mission does not go according to plan.
This film, directed by Christopher Nolan and written by him and his brother, is going to make Nolan fans cream their jeans They are, after all, a vociferous bunch, and they tend to think of him as a cinematic deity. Me – not so much. I have enjoyed his films, but I also think they are very flawed, and Interstellar is no exception.
It is a very derivative film, with so much borrowed from 2001 and 2010 that you are constantly expecting robot TARS to turn against the crew members. The main story is OK (if somewhat familiar) but the resolution, even though decked out with pseudo-science gobbledegook, still reeks of plot expediency rather than scientific verisimilitude. And it is far, far too long – there is an entire sequence featuring an unexpected well-known face which could have been replaced with a 30-second alternative, and nothing of any narrative significance would have been lost. This is not a well-paced film although, on a single viewing, it does hold the interest. However, at nearly 3 hours, it could usefully lose an hour of running time.
It contains good performances, visuals which are interesting if somewhat less spectacular than I would have hoped for, silence in space (hooray!), a character played by child and adult performers who actually look like each other and – surprisingly for Nolan – some genuine emotion.
This isn't a bad film, but it has far too high an opinion of itself.