Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's still pretty epic and powerful

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2014)

Alternate title: What?!? Sorry I can't hear what you said over the sound of Hans Zimmer's organ.
An interesting movie-going experience, this was. I say, go see it in IMAX (if you feel like coughing up the extra $9-10 per ticket). There will be several points during the film where you won't be able to understand a word of the dialog being spoken due to the blaring soundtrack. In some cases, whatever happened during that scene will be explained later, in others not. But the visual impact of many of the scenes is so powerful that I'm glad I experienced them in the largest format available.
You gotta give Christopher Nolan credit. The guy "goes big or goes home" - and he doesn't often go home, certainly not this time. I was moved to tears a few times during this movie, laughed several times, was awed a lot, and thought a lot.
I went into the movie having read many of the reviews on IMDb - mostly negative ones - and I actually enjoyed the movie more having had it "spoiled". This way I already knew I wouldn't be able to hear some of the dialog, and I was prepared for some of the sappier plot twists. It helped me appreciate the movie more because almost everything the nay-sayers didn't complain about was highly enjoyable (and some of the things they complained about didn't bother me at all).
For one thing, the boxy robots definitely stole the show. Calling them boxy isn't quite fair - they get quite a lot of traction -literally - from being composed of articulated rectangular slabs. And when their dialog wasn't being drowned out it was very, very clever.
Oh, and actually it wasn't really the robots that stole the show. It was McConaughey. Lincoln clearly took their cue from Reese's Pieces and E.T. (not M&M's), because having Matthew M. start hawking their luxo-boats shortly before the release of this movie was a brilliant marketing strategy. Matthew's folksy every-man is exactly what was needed in this role (Interstellar I mean, but I guess it goes for luxury SUV salesman as well), and he played it perfectly. It especially helps that he can express a range of emotion with his face since we can't hear him a lot of the time. Same with Anne Hathaway. And I always thought Michael Caine was way too famous and distinguished a face to be believable as a mere butler, but he did fine as an ethically conflicted astrophysicist.
The supporting cast - Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, and the actors who played Coop's children, played their roles well also.
Like Titanic, this was a very fast (almost) 3 hours and that's a sign of an entertaining movie. It's weird, because there weren't even really that many big action scenes or plot transitions. I guess they were all just nicely padded with explanatory scenes that didn't feel like filler to me.
Yes, there was no real "M. Night Shyamalan twist" here because the surprise ending was blatantly telegraphed from the beginning. And yes there is lots of science and pseudo-science and head-scratching stuff that doesn't seem plausible (and probably isn't) but somehow it all just works.
And yes there were things I didn't like about Interstellar, in addition to the earsplittingly ham-handed sound editing. For example, I wish they'd have tried harder to convince us that Earth was in peril (yeah, I know, who are "they?"). The alternations between "Dust Bowl, Kansas" and "Field of Dreams, Iowa", both with well maintained and fully fueled pickup trucks (and no civil strife) rang kind of hollow. But then again, maybe that strange duality is not so far from the truth as the world exists today, and lots of people would love a Plan B right here, right now.
The comparisons with 2001: A Space Odyssey are inevitable, and I think Interstellar holds up quite favorably in that match-up (so favorably it wins by TKO). Interstellar has every element of 2001 - the realistic space scenes, the psychedelic space scenes, the epic majestic score (it's no Also Sprach Zarathustra but not much is), artificial intelligence as a main character, and the intriguing, highly speculative commentary on the evolution of the human race. But Interstellar's "wow factor" to "snooze factor" ratio is much better than 2001's, and its emotional factor (on a scale of 1 to 10) is around 11 (I think only Saving Private Ryan has moved me more), whereas 2001's emotional factor is about -5.
In summary, Interstellar is entertaining enough that regardless of whether you end up thinking it's been over-hyped, it's probably still worth a look-see on the big screen.