Spoiler Alert: This review contains plot giveaways.
The movie "Interstellar" should have been called "Interstupor" because that's what the film put me in. The three hour project could have been cut in half without harm, the superfluous hour and a half, due to the preponderance of low-angle camera shots, spent mainly looking up Matthew McConaughey's nostrils.
The movie "Interstellar" should have been called "Interstupor" because that's what the film put me in. The three hour project could have been cut in half without harm, the superfluous hour and a half, due to the preponderance of low-angle camera shots, spent mainly looking up Matthew McConaughey's nostrils.
McConaughey and co-star Anne Hathaway are no George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, and "Interstellar" is no "Gravity." The movie comes off like a wanna-be "2001: A Space Odyssey" for a new generation without ever hitting the mark. There is even a mobile AI with a sarcastic streak preprogrammed to a certain percentage of humor. I was not moved to tears as I was by Hal 9000, a much better actor.
The plot is set in a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape where dust storms are a way of life, and young people are forced to become farmers whether they want to or not because food production has replaced war as the country's top priority. McConaughey jacks a drone that just happens to be flying around guideless, then cannibalizes the parts for automated farm equipment.
In a totally unbelievable plot twist, some lines of sand on the floor of his daughter's bedroom leads McConaughey to a top-secret NASA installation and is instantly commandeered into piloting a one-way mission to Saturn and beyond.
Towards the end of this endless movie, Matt Damon gratuitously appears as a coldly calculating astronaut marooned on a barren planet and bent on murdering his rescue crew. Damon is not known for his emotive acting, and here he reaches his pinnacle in lifeless performances.
Much of the buzz surrounding the release has focused on the scientific conceptualizations of time-warps, multi-dimensions, spherical wormholes, and a giant black hole named Gargantuan. Coincidentally we had chicken with tarragon for dinner before we headed out, and I couldn't help thinking that Gargantuan Vs. Tarragon the Chicken from Outer Space, would have been a better movie.
Unfortunately, the movie was not shot in 3D because the director, Christopher Nolan, is not a fan of the format, I am a fan of the format, and 3D would have at least added some interest.
The hype also includes comments from such luminaries as Neil deGrasse Tyson who stated that the black hole special effects were the closest representation of an actual event horizon ever filmed, but when the movie eventually got to the climax, there was nothing I hadn't seen before.
I really tried to like this movie, but it just never sucked me in like light around a you know what. All in all, "Interstellar" was not worth the half a box of popcorn I left on the theater floor.
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