2001: A Space Odyssey This Movie Is Not

Rating: 1/10 (5 April 2015)

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was excited. It looked to be an epic sci-fi story in the vein of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Not even close. Instead, I would liken this movie more to the awful sequel to 2001, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which is actually much better than Interstellar.
This movie is a perfect example of a director not being reigned in by his producer. What you get here are almost three hours of an immensely drawn out story that is incredibly boring and overwrought for its own good. In fact, my wife walked out of the room after 30 minutes. Hoping that the story would eventually pick up, I continued to watch this dud for another half hour, eventually turning off the DVD player to watch something more interesting on regular television. I did watch the second half the next day though. However, my follow up viewing just further confirmed to me just how bad this movie is.
Again, the nearly 3 hour length of this movie is its major problem. They could have easily cut 45 minutes out. In fact, the first 45 minutes of this movie is spent trying to develop the relationship between the father (Matthew McConaughey) and his young daughter, which is a major part of the story. Unfortunately, all that character development fails, because in the end, you could care less. In fact, throughout the entire movie Matthew McConaughey drivels in this low, gravel voice that, after 15 minutes or so, became frustratingly annoying to listen to.
Anne Hathaway plays a scientist. Unfortunately, her character is cold and aloof and you end up not caring about her either. Her important scientific training also gets thrown out along the way as she trades that all in for an emotional attachment that puts her mission in peril. I was like, "Huh? Really?" Would her character have made THAT decision? Oh, that's right. She's a woman. They get emotional.
Same goes for John Lithgow, Matt Damon and Michael Cain. All are capable actors. But in this movie they are forgettable, cardboard cut out characters who, again, the viewer could care less about.
The visuals are interesting. However, bad dialog and overly lengthy scenes make this movie drag on far too long. In fact, Interstellar even borrows a scene from 2010 involving the mission's artificially intelligent computer HAL 9000 (here, a robot) and its willingness to do whatever its human masters ask of it.
The last 10 minutes of this movie is completely superfluous. It reminded me a lot of the ending to A.I. where the movie ends with a "feel good" epilogue. Same thing going on here.
Sometimes less is more. A two hour movie with faster pacing, a tighter story and better character development would have made a galaxy of difference here. I'm not sure if this would have necessarily made this movie any better in my opinion, just more watchable in one sitting without the viewer's butt getting sore!
To be fair, I would have given this movie 5 stars out of 10. Again, the visuals and premise are interesting. However, the one star is to offset the over abundance of 10 star reviews here - which I don't believe this movie deserves.
Glad I waited for this movie to come out on RedBox. I would have never paid theater prices for what seemed to me to be a nearly three hour director's cut.