The final 30-40 minutes were thought-provoking and interesting - it's just a shame that the first 2 hours weren't

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2015)

Earth as we know it is dying and scientists at NASA believe that they may be able to locate an alternative planet for the Earth's population when a wormhole is discovered in space. NASA big wig Professor Brand (Michael Caine) asks Cooper (Matthew McConaughey)if he will lead this mission with a small team to assist him - this is due to Cooper being one of their best pilots when he used to work for them. Even though the mission may last for decades, Cooper makes the difficult decision to sacrifice seeing his family for several years in order to try to save humanity.
The first obvious problem with this film is its rather generous running time of nearly 160 minutes. Now I don't generally have a problem with long films, but if the screenplay that you've written necessitates the need for a long run time then for goodness sake give us something to care about. For around 120 of the 160 minutes of this film I was almost completely bored - nothing much happens, the characters in the film are under developed and probably can't even really be classed as characters. The film is far too talky which isn't a problem if the dialogue is interesting, but it just isn't here. A robot comes along to assist the crew, but I'm assuming that the robot was also there for comedy value - it would have been nice if the robot's comedy value was utilised a little more just to try and break up some of the dreary dialogue. As well as being quite boring, there were other problematic aspects within the plot...
1) We're told that 'they' have put a wormhole up in space 48 years ago which could potentially take you through into another world or possibly another dimension. OK How do you just put a wormhole in space? Who were these people? I know that this is 'science fiction' and therefore it gives writers a bit more of a poetic licence than other genres, but if you're going to make something up at least explain what you're making up.
2) Was the whole aspect with Matt Damon really necessary? It reminded me of the stupid plot twist in Sunshine where we end up with a crazed lone survivor. It was pointless and added nothing to the story. The film was arguably too long as it was without this unnecessary element being added so by adding it and making an already long film into a film that's way too long really annoyed me.
Despite the fact that the first 120 minutes were almost mind-numbingly boring, Interstellar does close strongly and the final 30 minutes or so do provide some interesting and rather thought-provoking revelations.