A Visually Stunning Film That Disappoints In The End

Rating: 6/10 (26 April 2015)

I'll start out by saying that I'd been looking forward to Interstellar for months. I wouldn't consider myself a "Nolanite", but I do consider him to be a good director who has done a lot to revolutionize film. Since I don't generally go to theaters, I avoided almost all information on this film (except for general reviews) until it came out on DVD and I could watch it. The time finally came! I was so excited to watch it and in the end I was....disappointed....and puzzled. Interstellar ain't no Inception, or Dark Knight, or Prestige. In fact, it's probably Nolan's weakest film. That's not to say that it's terrible, but it does fall short in the end.
Let's star with the positives: The film is absolutely stunning visually. The effects are fantastic, as is the cinematography. The scenes in space, the alien planets and the spacecraft are the best parts of the film. You can tell Nolan did his research in these instances and created a truly convincing world with believable technology and science.
I loved TARS and CASE, the blocky robots. They were something truly original and unique. I liked that they both had their own personalities and that they were truly there to help, and not have "crazy robot double motives" as is so cliché in these types of film.
Mathew McConaughey, Matt Damon, Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain and the criminally underused Casey Affleck all deliver fantastic performances.
Finally, the concept of the film itself, is unique, original and interesting.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few negatives to this film that keep it from being a great film:
Like a lot of critics have pointed out, the dialogue tends to be a bit sappy. Like most people, I groaned at Anne Hathaway's "love" speech, as well as a lot of Cooper's overly "inspirational" speeches.
On that note, I found Anne Hathaway, who I thought did a great job in TDKR, to be flat, boring, passionless and generally uninteresting. Her performance simply did nothing for me. Likewise, Michael Cain, who usually knocks it out of the park, was uninteresting as well. Perhaps it was his character, which is slightly unlikeable, but it just seemed like he was playing a slightly different version of the character that he always plays in Nolan movies. Like I mentioned above, Casey Affleck was criminally underused. The guy's a great actor and there was potential for so much more to his character, but it wasn't used.
And then there's the biggest problem of all: The last third of the film. The film was genuinely exciting, interesting and enthralling right up until (SPOILER!! SPOILER!! SPOILER!!) Cooper goes into Gargantua. From here the film goes completely off the rails into the realm of near ridiculousness. Here, the story that was fairly plausible, goes completely out the window into a confusing, silly, overly convenient mess. This is where the film stalls and it doesn't really get better from then on out. And that's perhaps the worst thing of all. Until this part, this is an excellent film. It could have gone in a different direction to END as an excellent film, but unfortunately, it doesn't.
Still, I applaud Nolan for making something truly original and unique. In this world of reboots and remakes, it's very nice to see an original idea. And like I said, the film is stunning visually. If you're a fan of sci-fi, science, space or Nolan, I recommend RENTING this. Just be aware that it falls well short of his past works such as Inception, Memento and The Dark Knight.