A nice homage to "2001"

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2015)

What would you put in a modern homage to "2001: A Space Odyssey"?
-Docking to rotating space vehicle (for centrifugal gravity) with classical music? Check
-Hibernation travel to an outer planet supervised by sentient machines? Check
-An artificial 3-D environment constructed by aliens so humans can comprehend? Check
-A device (here spherical, there rectangular) to transport us to said environment? Check
-Colorful reflections on the hyperspace traveler's helmet during transport? Check
-Explosion in an airlock while gaining access to a space ship? Check
This was all far more visionary in 1968 than in 2014. Although not quite Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, Nolan and writers managed to construct quite a good homage, with a more personal story embedded in it than the 1968 classic. Taken completely by itself, the story is a bit trite, one might say at TV drama level, and this sinks the ticker to 8 stars out of 10 right there. It's a good story though, even if well-worn: a widowed father up against a choice to save the many, or to save his daughter. (His son is already beyond him to save, due to his own neglect.) Here, time travel through a wormhole adds the twist that a father must see his child die, but yet with another twist: she has lived much longer than he, and is surrounded by family and offspring. So her death is not tragic in the "unfulfilled life" sense that a child's death is usually tragic. It is more like a reversal of the parent-child role at the deathbed.
The many-dimensions-rolled-into-three artificial environment, so the space-faring father can comprehend, turns out to be created by our descendants from a far future. Fine. It seems that they should have been able to place both wormhole entrances near an ordinary G- or K-class star like our sun, instead of mostly uninhabitable planets near an exotic black hole. Somewhat of a story-ending plot hole. Still fine. But the silly "happy ending," where dad flies after his love interest, who is seeding humans near the black hole, definitely is pure Hollywood. Another star off, to 7/10. Where Spielberg's "AI" should have ended when the ferris wheel fell on the AI boy as he saw the Fairie Godmother, this film should have ended with dad walking down the hospital hallway alone as his daughter dies of old age, rather than dad hi-jacking a spaceship from a secure facility and flying to the damsel in distress.
The performances are solid and suitably under-played, and the actors and Nolan deserve a lot of credit for that. For otherwise the TV drama aspect would win out over the grand setting. Michael Caine is a nice celebrity cameo touch as the physicist who lures the film's hero with "Plan A," but really believes that only the much less pleasant "Plan B" will work out. Nolan and Caine must have gotten on well on "Batman."
7/10 is a nice film, and this is well acted, well directed, well set-designed, well CGId and generally well written. Definitely a film to see again, although I think history will not judge it as highly as the kind IMDb user ratings.