Another insult to intelligence

Rating: 1/10 (8 February 2016)

I love intelligent sci-fi movies. 2001: A Space Odyssey (the movie Interstellar clearly wants to emulate) was a real masterpiece that still remains unequalled to this day. I have nothing against slow, introspective SF either. I thoroughly enjoyed Tarkovsky's Solaris, for example.
It's not that I dislike Nolan's work. Memento was a brilliant movie. I found The Prestige engaging, too. Inception veered a little close to Hollywood bombast and used some dumb clichés, but was still original and interesting.
But this one is just plain bad. Worse, it masquerades itself as an intelligent film when it actually makes no sense at all. For me, that type of pretentiousness is the biggest cinematic sin of all. Hence the 'awful' rating.
The build-up is extremely long and boring. Later, the first simple docking manoeuvre is presented as if it was the dramatic climax of the movie. The scenes stretches on and on, and the irritating, minimalistic music tells you you're supposed to bite your nail in excitement. I was bored to death instead. The same thing with the mini-climax that cross-cuts scenes on Earth and Dr Mann's planet (when Mann tries to kill Cooper). No matter how hard Nolan tries to suggest some kind of superhuman drama with the painfully long build-up, irritating music, and cross-cutting, apart form his tricks and the tired clichés, there's nothing there. It's still a long way to go until the end, which - not surprisingly, after so much artificial drama - falls completely flat.
The big revelation? I knew as soon as Cooper and his daughter found the message 'from beyond' who the sender would turn out to be.