Gets better when it abandons science

Rating: 5/10 (3 April 2015)

In my view there are two types of science fiction. The first type wants to wow us with science and must therefore be faithful to it. The second type wants to tell us one of those universal stories (boy meets girl - who turns out to be his sister, then meets evil guy who turns out to be his dad etc...) and uses 'science' very loosely as a way of isolating and highlighting the story.
Some science fiction makes the mistake of trying to do both. This film is one such mistake. The basic story that love conquers all, even space and time is a good one. And to focus on the love between a parent and a child offers an interesting perspective. But first we have to go through a wormhole and skim through an event horizon. Actually that's all OK. The problem is the plot device that Earth is dying and our best hope is colonising one of a selection of planets that appear to be far worse options. How can it make more sense to move to a frozen planet or a desert planet orbiting a black hole than to just fix the Earth?
The film spends quite a while setting up the Earth is dying scenario. Unfortunately it's far from convincing. Luscious green corn on a huge mechanised super farm is occasionally lightly coated with a little dust. We are told that corn is all we have left because other crops are succumbing to 'blight', and it's only a matter of time before corn is next. So, instead of using any kind of genetic engineering to try and counter this we opt for a giant space ark and shipping everyone off through that wormhole. It also seems rather odd that a supposed global food crisis hasn't led to conflict, crime or indeed any kind of apparent suffering.
The next highly implausible offering is Cooper (Matthew McConaghy) stumbling into a 'secret' NASA base with a giant rocket hidden inside. If we've learnt nothing else from Snowden it is that Americans can't hide anything! Although, to be fair, the film does at least poke fun at American credulity by having schools teach that the moon landings actually were faked. And then to top it all the scientists pick this bloke who's just wandered in to pilot a spaceship he's never seen before. But I will come back to that.
So they trundle off into space in what looks like a Saturn 5 before transferring into more Star Wars like spacecraft. There's a bit of cryogenic sleep, some time dilation and some robot stuff which obviously references 2001 and the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy (that at least is a good thing!). Then there is some ludicrous nonsense as they land on a water world where the sea is 18 inches deep but waves are half a mile high (where does the water come from? - maybe that doesn't stretch the credulity of an American audience 40% of whom think Noah is a documentary). Next is an ice world with solid clouds...
Here they meet Mann (Matt Damon). Now, suddenly it gets interesting when he turns out to be a bit unhinged and some genuine tension is developed. You really get a sense of the last part of 2001 here as we feel the loneliness and the characters' reliance on fragile 'rafts' in the vast emptiness of space. That parallel is further explored as Cooper falls into the black hole and things get very weird, multi dimensional and spiritual. Here we see him trapped in a fifth dimension trying to communicate with his daughter in a way that earlier in the film was prefigured as some kind of paranormal activity.
Because this doesn't make sense scientifically - it does make sense as a piece of story telling. And if you buy into the idea that Cooper is part of some time looping master plan to save the human race then you might accept his selection to pilot the mission (see above).
Unfortunately, for me this is all spoiled because the Nolans keep trying to explain it all instead of just allowing it to be a mystery. Just like the first brilliantly ambivalent Matrix film was subsequently ruined by its sequels that tried to explain it all, so this film is undone by trying to be both kinds of sci-fi.