Review of 'Interstellar'

interstellar.jpg It is the near future and things are not looking great for earth. Pretty much everyone is reduced to farming to sustain the population and one by one the crops are failing. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) a former pilot with NASA is finding it difficult to face farming so when investigating a mysterious message he jumps at an opportunity to help NASA rise from the ashes and save the people of earth. He is tasked to head up a mission through a wormhole to a far distant galaxy to investigate whether the planets there would be suitable for human settlement.

This movie seems to take forever to get off the ground (literally and figuratively) and even then things proceed at their own pace with only a few Adrenalin-inducing scenes. This works for me as I was drawn into the movie and the characters to see what would happen next.

The special effects here are incredible - Not sharp and crisp but more fuzzy and realistic. The technology is not dwelt on but taken for granted which adds to the air of authenticity. The only thing that slightly grated on me was the unusual robots that, at rest, look like a black rectangular box (see below for comment about 2001) but then walk by segmenting into four which can't be terribly practical. The robots' blatantly human voices do them no favors nor do the childish computer screens embedded in their surface. But, other than that the spacecraft and other technological elements work very well.

Though most of the characters are well thought out and portrayed I did find that the hang-up that Cooper's daughter “Murph” (Mackenzie Foy) has on him “abandoning her” very over-done. This is not the actresses fault but rather the script - I know we have need for dramatic tension but seriously, do we need to see her go into midlife hung up that her daddy left her? I felt this was a simplified pastiche but, of course, it does drive some later narrative elements of the film.

Interstellar owes a lot to the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” and you can see this with both the slower, contemplative, pace but also in the ending (without, hopefully, giving anything away). I do kind of wonder how much of this was intentional…it does seem to be, perhaps, TOO close to 2001 as if it was not confident enough to stand on it's own. But, taken by itself, I think it does.

This is not a movie you will want to watch looking for a quick “action hit” but if you want something that may make you think or, perhaps, it may at least be something to watch if you want to just sit back and enjoy the view…

Rating: “Really good but I have some issues”

Review Date: 2014-11-14


Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Studio: Legendary Pictures

Year: 2014

Length: 169 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/


Other reviewed films by Christopher Nolan: