Makes three hours feel like a lifetime - awful

Rating: 2/10 (21 November 2014)

OK, I'll keep this brief, but I'll also nail my credentials to the mast first. I know science, cosmology, sci-fi and film-making pretty well. I have, in the past taught film studies at degree level, and worked on the production of more than one major Hollywood sci-fi film. I read Stephen Baxter and I like space stuff a lot. More than a lot. And why am I telling you this? Because I should have loved "Interstellar", but I didn't for one simple reason: It is a truly dreadful piece of film-making.
I won't even bother with dissecting the "science" in the film, because that isn't really the issue (it is wrong on pretty much every level). I'm not even going to bother complaining about the absurd audio balance in the sound mix. And I'll ignore the sub-standard special effects - because FX don't a great movie make.
The issues I have with Interstellar are essentially these: The film is an arse-numbing three hours long, and feels far longer. The pace is stunningly poorly judged - the first hour in particular could have been cut to ten minutes and far more would have been gained than lost.
The characters are paper-thin, and I didn't care about any of them. The plot is entirely derivative (mostly of the vastly superior "Contact"). The special effects aren't special at all and the editing (or lack of) is so self-indulgent it is a text book example of a director so enamoured with his project that he loses objectivity. The result is a plodding, flabby, and desperately dull movie devoid of any real excitement or emotional impact.
I won't go on, but special mention must be made of the planets - Paddling World and Coldworld. You see virtually nothing of either, and so utterly uninteresting are they that what should have been a moment of genuine cinematic wonderment was squandered with a bit of poor CGI painfully inferior to "A Perfect Storm" and a location less dramatic than your own back garden.
I've probably not been a brief as I intended, but as I write this I feel the disappointment and actual anger I felt on leaving the cinema bubbling to the surface again. It was a total let-down and a waste of more than three hours of my life. The gushing reviews on here are ridiculous and absurd, and I am forced to conclude that reviewers either watched a different film to me, or saw something so brilliant it completely passed me by. I am fairly confident I didn't doze off, although I desperately wanted to.
So in conclusion, "Contact" did all of this far, far better, fifteen years ago. In Contact the characters are human, believable, beautifully realised and you care what happens to them. The relationship between Father and Daughter is deeply moving and inspiring. But then the plot is far more sophisticated anyway, dealing with the social tensions and impact of the discovery of extra-terrestrial life, the science is accurate and entirely plausible (it was written by Carl Sagan after all), the movie is genuinely thrilling and full of spectacle, and it has something very profound to say.
Contact is everything Interstellar is not, and it has a considerably shorter running time. Contact brought tears to my eyes, Interstellar bored me to tears.