Good actors, bad movie

Rating: 3/10 (8 February 2016)

I loved Gravity, since it was an exploration of human drama. I loved the Star Trek remake since it JJ is pretty dang good, and it was all make-believe and whizzy. I hated this movie. There were respites. When Matthew McConaughey's said "I could fly around that neutron star." I burst out laughing, it was so preposterous, so absurd and so lame. I will admit, he sold the line. If he can pretend to be imaginary people and lie so effectively, it makes me worry about politicians and my friends.
It really scares me that Nolan thinks this movie makes any sense. Has his brain turned to Yorkshire pudding? It was written as a series of dramatic expedients. Like Chris just had to have a dust-bowl, so there was a dust-bowl. And Chris just had to have a big ol' rocket launch. There had to be wormholes and time travel and sinking to the level of M. Night Shyamalan, a twist at the end.
Another annoyance is Nolan's British elitism, that farmers are dumb peons that don't need to go to college. Note how Coop loves his troubled intellectual daughter and not the son that ends up feeding the planet.
Even with these great actors, the situations were so preposterous it was impossible to feel anything but pity for the agents that got them into this mess. A near-future dystopia, where there are cars and trucks but not phones or letters or internet. No government, but no MS13, Hell's Angels and Mafioso raping your daughter. The occasional pervasive dust storm. But the crops grow OK. Until they don't. And somehow we know the planet is doomed, if only because some jerk says it is.
There is a huge NASA installation a few hours drive away, but nobody knows about it. Coop sends co-ordinates so he knows it is there. Nolan might want to ask Kip the science guy about causality and determinism. No government, no gasoline, but we have NASA and suspended animation since Nolan needs that little plot trick. Its a drive-by script-- spray some more clichés at it until they call you a genius.
And folks, you can't drive into a black hole. Its not black because its mysterious and can be used for incredibility stupid plot tricks. Its black because it rips everything into elementary particles and then perhaps super-strings. There is no daddy's little time-travel library of earthy delights inside a black hole.
This could have been OK, it could have been Mad Max crossed with Groundhog Day. Instead, it is just mush, good to keep infants amused with pretty colors and motion, but complete nonsensical mush for adults. Matt Damon was lucky to get blown out into empty space in that little plot cliché. I felt more empathy for the creature in Aliens getting blown into space than I did for Matt.
To recap the 7 places in the movie: Home life--BS situation, BS character interaction. Space central- BS situation, BS characters. Space ship, BS situation, BS characters. Planet one- BS situation. Planet two-- BS situation, BS character, BS interaction. Black hole-- BS everything, and I mean every single thing. Planet 3, BS trite. Home again-- BS situations, BS characters, BS interaction.
Please studio heads and finance people stop indulging this madman with his infantile fantasies. Even Lord of the Rings was better than this.
At this point I usually imagine how I would save the film. Its not re-shoots, every single scene and every single line is stupid, there is nothing here to save.
OK, I have calmed down and I can no more give up on a crappy movie than on a baby drowning in a swimming pool. So, add the roving Mad Max gangs that rip him off and pillage and steal. Then they come for his daughter. The NASA installation is not some secret, its where they have been launching the Skynet robots to control us all, right before things collapsed. So Coop takes his little girl, and commandeers a spacecraft. We need the gal, and the black guy but not the other white guy-- what ever happened to him anyway--- Oh, he drowned in Waterworld. I assume he is some famous high-dollar actor, save the money for special effects. OK, now when I saw the cool black guy, I muttered "He's as good as dead" and sure enough, like all cool black guys in every science fiction movie, he died. So lets go against the grain and promise that no matter what, the cool black guy lives. Cut out Waterworld, we already lost the dufus white guy that drowned there. Cut out the black hole-- it is absurd, stupid and insults our intelligence. Cut out the third planet, this script is too complicated as it is.
No, they fly to the Matt Damon planet and yeah, he can be a creep. OK, now we have the making of a third act. It revolves around who the women will pick to mate with. Daddy's little girl has grown up, and that science gal is pretty hot as well. I leave it to you to select the ending: 1) The black guy ends up with both of the gals, bless him, and maybe pimps them out (cliche alert). 2) Matt ends up with the daughter, and he beats her and is a drunk (hillbilly heaven). 3) Matthew ends up with his own daughter, since their relationship seemed unhealthy anyway. 4) There are three guys and two gals so pick the guy that ends up alone. 5) The two gals go carpet muncher and leave all the guys in the cold, human race dies. 6) Any two guys being gay leaves both gals for the other guy, unless #5). 7) The Strangelove prodigious breeding ending, where all the guys jump both girls over and over and over and over and over.... well, you get the idea.