My Review of Interstellar

It is fitting that I start my blog by offering my thoughts on the new smash sci-fi hit known only as Interstellar. It was, after all this movie which finally convinced me to start this blog. It is no accident that both critics and audiences alike are split on whether they love the movie or hate it. A healthy debate is all good fun in the world of cinema. However, it is my opinion that there should be no debate at all. For me, it wasn’t about whether the movie was good on a technical level or even entertaining, it was. Yes, my number one principle for judging movies is that they first clear the hurdle of entertaining, and Interstellar does so with flying colors. But beyond that factor, we must start to look at the movie as a whole, and Interstellar fails on so many levels. There has been plenty covering the films lack of humanity and inconsistencies, but I would like to address one subject that I feel has been overlooked and what truly bothered me in the end. I could overlook the non-spirituality factor in a science fiction film, but I cannot get over how cheap I felt this movie to be, not in production, but in story. I expected originality, what I got instead was a rip-off of just about every science fiction movie ever. I failed to find anything original in the film and coming from Christopher Nolan, that was a major disappointment. Here is the man who practically single-handedly proved you could ground comic book movies and give them a real life feel, yet he adheres to every plot and cliché already explored in the genre. Without even yet giving it a second viewing, I can already draw the similarities between it and at least two different science fiction movies. There is the message from beyond that is Contact and the future exists already and is in a way a loop such as we see in Timeline. This is not even touching plot holes and character inconsistencies. If you want to read those in detail, I recommend this article from Entertainment Weekly that does a better job than I could in addressing these issues. http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/11/07/interstellar-plot-explained/

I do hope you go watch Interstellar. For all its flaws, mistake, and disappointments, it was an entertaining film that keeps you on the edge of your seat wanting to see it through. I just felt these issues need to address due to the source of the film and the hype surrounding it. It was good, it was not great. It lacked originality, which is something I think everyone expects from a new science fiction film. It had science to boot, but I don’t think it requires a master’s degree to understand the plot and how everything works. I wholeheartedly dismiss Christopher Nolan’s notion that those of us who did not find the film lived up to its hype and promise felt that way because we failed to grasp it. I grasped it very well, I just hated what I walked out of the movie theater with: not confused, just disappointed and cheated.   

2 1/12 stars out of 5