Seemed Like a Poor Attempt at Creating a Modern 2001: A Space Odyssey

Rating: 4/10 (20 February 2015)

I'll start off by saying that this is the first Christopher Nolan movie that I did not thoroughly enjoy. The whole film seemed like an attempt to create a modern 2001: A Space Odyssey with a little mix of Mr. Nobody and Inception-like-structures at the end. It had robots with similar intelligence, voice, and aesthetics to HAL 9000, a bookshelf time warp zone that reminded me a lot of the server room in 2001, and they even went right down to the organ music playing the entire time (which really grinds on your nerves after 3 hours).
Their efforts pointed towards trying to make something that will one day become a classic in the realm of Sci-Fi rather than making a good movie. It had a lot of lights and flash but not enough tangible substance. The script and material tried to be all scientific, but couldn't convey the theories (whether valid or not) to the audience. It all seemed like unexplainable "scientific" bull crap and was not made believable. They liked to throw around the word data a lot, I guess to make it sound smart. I am not an astrophysicist or anything but it just seemed like a bash on all of the viewers' intelligence. Yes I know that it is "Science Fiction," but it is hard to see it that way when there is no fantasy element and it is all presented as realistic fact.
Even the littlest things that most people probably missed bothered me. The poor understanding of agriculture ex: green corn in a drought and dust bowl? green corn burning? and other things like the convenience of an ankle deep ocean covering a entire planet.
The makers seemed to know it was far fetched and nonsensical so they even went to the point of just adding explanations like "the power of love saved them" or whatever that was. I guess for the mass populous the graphics or something (which I must have missed) covered up all of its flaws well enough for them to still consider it a good movie. But the visuals were not even that appealing to me. Some of it was cool and trippy (once again trying to be like 2001) but much of it was just like Gravity all over again.
We had some seen before actors who have collaborated with Nolan in the past and some new faces like Matthew McConaughey who was quite exceptional. The acting was generally good and all passable, nothing too bad, but that is not what made the movie lacking. It was the storyline which is usually Nolan's strongest feature in his films. Even with all of its good characteristics, it is hard to like a movie that just doesn't make any sense. At one point in the film I believe that Cooper said something like: "I want to know where we are and where we are going." That was the question that I desperately wanted answered throughout the entire viewing.