Disappointed

Rating: 4/10 (8 November 2014)

I am a Nolan fan but, and perhaps that's why, I see Interstellar as a failed magic act. The multi-layered surprise and amazement that we have come to expect of Nolan's films did not deliver. I believe this particular film, like Prometheus, failed due to the maker's inherent desire to create an epic - it took on too much, tried too hard and did it all wrong.
I'm willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of artistic creativity, assume space suits and modern telecommunication systems pass unscathed through black holes (and really, who knows?) but there are things that cannot be excused with the budget and resources at the disposal of this genius film-making team (such as bad script and poor plot planning).
IDEA / PLOT The overarching idea is good, if not new. I found it hard to feel amazed by the (too many) plot twists. Ultimately the combination of all of them was tepid. We were expecting Murphy to be older than Cooper midway onwards. Murphy's brilliant solution leading to mankind's escape from earth failed to awe. Firstly - a massive stretch on the Morse code / quantum data, secondly - the two laugh-out-loud "eureka" moments - and thirdly, the "aha" factor on seeing the new, curved reality space station was completely missing that feeling - "aha, so that was it, that's what it was all about". More failures - Matt Damon segue and the very overdone "ghost" revelation.
SYMBOLISM / KEY TWIST The portrayal of the time dimension within a three dimensional world in the form of the undulating bookshelf wall was beautifully rendered. However everything else about that scene felt wrong - the space-suited Cooper - would he have stayed in exactly that form inside a singularity even if future advanced beings - them / us - have helpfully carved him a neat 3-D nook in a 5-D world? This needed exploration and some complexity. The continuation of his radio communication equipment felt way too convenient, the whole frantic scene "explained" again by the unexplained rush that's a hallmark of this film.
So, although the symbolic setup was good, I had to work hard to suspend disbelief - to get Cooper to the back of the bedroom wall and have him throw out clues using gravity and love as forces transcending dimensions - why back of the wall? Why not front? Why did the space-time continuum stop him there (that you can't go back in the time dimension, does not explain how he could gravitationally interfere with that particular room - in the past - and why he couldn't, I don't know, leave a Morse code message to himself well before all of this happened? Also, why his daughter? We get no clue in the first part of the film why this duo in particular is chosen, the only hint to Murhpy's future proclivity for the sciences coming from a penchant for decoding Morse and Michael Caine's all- forgiving view of her as a"firebrand" or something such.)
PACING / DIALOG Plot pacing was terrible (variously too slow and too fast). Dialog was terrible. It would have benefited from further revision and thought around how to present this particular story to the layman. I found myself wondering how an actor of Matt Damon's caliber did not just wave a huge red flag when he had to say why Prof Brand knew the mission would fail -"because he could not reconcile quantum physics with the theory of relativity" (not a direct quote). Even if he isn't a physicist. The only lines I can still recall liking in the film are by Dylan Thomas (also overused).
PRESENTATION I write this with only an armchair enthusiasm for physics, familiarity limited to the most dumbed-down works of Stephen Hawking. I found most of the science concepts used very trite - wormholes, black holes, relativity, time dilation - trite because of their portrayal as convenient plot tools. Having agreed in an extreme and completely unexplained hurry to leave his family behind perhaps forever, we then find out that Cooper needs to be told these concepts one at a time using, at varying moments, a folded paper pierced by a pen, oyster/pearl metaphors, and a suddenly-presented love interest for Anne Hathaway (that plot point on love being an unexplained force was particularly deeply unconvincing). I understand some of the angles needed to be explained to most people, but Nolan has done hard things more elegantly in the past. That is where one expected Nolan to deliver.
As things were it made you wonder the entire time why this crew was the best of humanity. Murphy's law, indeed.
ACTING Matthew McConaughey's drawl was sporadic and seemed unnecessary. His character did not convince me either that he was the guy who is most capable of being spontaneously recruited for an urgent NASA mission (and what if he had refused?), nor that he was the guy who loved his daughter in a unique way that transcended dimensions (or more so than anyone else), nor even as a suitable candidate to return from this odyssey with all its shenanigans through black holes, gyrating space stations and a cracked space helmet (!) We never know his history well enough. Anne Hathaway and the rest of the crew were no more impressive. Michael Caine was convincing, but ultimately confusing, as his confession left more questions asked than answered.
TARS stole the show, and should have had more lines.
EFFECTS / SCORE The effects were not comparable to Gravity. I wondered why their spacecraft was not equipped with the basic equipment to check metrics / giant waves / frozen clouds / landing conditions when any commercial satellite today will do that for you and tell you where you are to a foot's accuracy. But, details.
The score was beautiful, and one of Zimmer's best. What a waste.