Less that the sum of its parts

Rating: 8/10 (16 March 2015)

After all the hype I finally got a chance to see Interstellar. After its nearly three hours I had to sit in silence for a while as the emotion swept over me and I realized that I was...underwhelmed. The movie is stunning, lavish, and, after all, it deals with the ultimate salvation of mankind. But it left me feeling empty - like when you were a kid and you really, really, really wanted a bicycle for Christmas and you got up on Christmas morning to find, not a bicycle, but something else. Maybe the something else was just as good as (or maybe even better than) a bicycle - but wasn't a bicycle. I guess my point is that it was less than I expected. Maybe, after all the hype, NOTHING could have lived up to my expectations.
But as I said - it was lavish, stunning, and a good story rather well told. What I have to ask myself is what my reaction might have been if I had gone into it cold - with no expectations. Maybe it had doomed itself to failure?