How disappointing

Rating: 3/10 (6 April 2015)

I saw this movie recently while flying home from overseas. I was excited to see the movie listed on the in-flight entertainment system. I heard much about it, and my expectations were set high: after all, the movie's scientific accuracy was praised by Neil deGrasse Tyson, no less. The physics was supposed to be top notch, coming from none other than Kip Thorne himself. The same Kip Thorne who was co-author of Gravitation, the famous "MTW" (Misner, Thorne and Wheeler) textbook that occupies a premier spot on the bookshelf of any physicist who deals with gravitation. (Yes, it's also on my bookshelf. Yes, I can do the equations, too.)
Don't get me wrong, I am no nitpicker like Sheldon Cooper. I know how to suspend my disbelief, and I don't let science stand in the way of a good story. Still, the science has to be at least marginally believable and the story has to be compelling.
The science of Interstellar is completely bogus. Don't even get me started on the lack of stable orbits close enough to a black hole to produce the enormous time dilation. The energy requirements to get a spaceship away from such a deep gravitational well. The fact that on the surface of such a planet, all infalling light would be drastically blueshifted, arriving as deadly X-rays. The conflation of black holes and wormholes. The ridiculous time travel/five- dimensions/ghost story thing. It's. Just. Nonsense.
As for the story... it was supposed to be compelling? Okay, it had a few decent moments, but even if I dismiss all the science issues, I still found the story neither credible or engaging.
And to be honest, the visuals weren't that great either, be it the drug-induced hallucination supposedly representing five dimensions or the decidedly Kubrickian, 2001-style space travel sequence.
Sure there are worse movies out there. But the only reason I don't call Interstellar a waste of three hours of my life is because that time was already wasted, sitting on an airplane. Still, in retrospect, I'd have been better off spending the time reading a good book. If only I had seen the movie's Honest Trailer on YouTube (which I just came across while I was writing this review) I'd surely have put those three hours to better use.