The Emperor's New Clothes

Rating: 3/10 (24 November 2014)

I sent to see Interstellar on Saturday night and have just spent 45 incredulous minutes reading the reviews. The film I went to see was dull, preposterous and far far far too long. Let's start with the idea. A good one but poorly displayed. I wanted to know more about how humanity was destroying the planet. All I got was old folk I am guessing talking about the duststorms of the 1920's and 1930's? Perhaps they were attempting to lay the foundation for the whole premise of the film? I also wanted to know more about Cooper but we didn't really see how he became a farmer other than the flashback at the start. When did his wife die? Why is his father in law living with him? Did we really get to understand the relevance of the droid they chased in the truck? Unfortunately most of the film is taken up with barely audible dialogue about scientific hypothesis and personal issues intertwined together. This made it very difficult to follow and the interest wanes as a result. BUT the biggest downfall of the film is Matt Damon. I am a fan off his but not in this. He is dreadfully miscast as the villain of the piece of sorts and that whole fight with Cooper and Ryan is poor. It is just not convincing at all and there is no suspense involved in the whole docking scene at all. Cooper just tells him not to dock as he hasn't got the codes but you never felt Ryan was in jeopardy. It was so poorly constructed. Overall vey similar to Inception in that it is at times visually stunning but rather like Inception it is style over substance. Beautiful to look at but like opening a strawberry cream in a box of Quality Street - very disappointing. And the title of my review? I am just a bit fed up that Nolan has made some fine early films and now nobody will criticise him? In The Emperors New Clothes nobody tells the Emperor he is wearing nothing until a little boy informs him. Somebody needs to tell Nolan that he needs to get back to crafting films full of suspense and not a plodding sci-fi full of characters you barely care about.