Interstellar is a very hard movie for me to rate, due to many variables and just how ambitious it is. It has a lot of pros (without a doubt) but it also has some flaws that, while occasionally overshadowed by the weight of the pros, ultimately come back to hurt the film in the long run. The film was directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan (of Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception fame) and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain. I would like to say that I am not an avid Nolan fanboy. I will not swear by him or automatically hail anything he puts out as a masterpiece or classic simply because he was the director. I do have faith in him though as a director and a writer and he has yet to make a bad film. I do happen to love most of his movies. With that little disclaimer aside, let's move on. The film's story is pretty simple. Earth is dying and Cooper (McConaughey) is sent to traverse a wormhole to find a new planet for mankind to inhabit. The plot proceeds slowly at first, gaining some traction once they go up into space. From there, it gets interesting and is not worth spoiling. The script was written by Nolan and his brother, with special input from theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. As is typical with Nolan's more recent movies, he tackles very big ideas and is not afraid to approach them. Unfortunately, with these big ideas and their added levels of science complexity, the plot sometimes gets lost in translation. While there are tidbits there to explain the science in layman, there were a few times where I was pretty confused as to why certain characters had to do certain things and what not. To be frank, it almost feels like the story, while obviously important to Nolan and still very good, was just a means to an end. That end is the visual style of the film. This is where the movie absolutely shines. The look of Earth was inspired by the 1930s Dust Bowl era, which is nailed perfectly. The family lives in an old farm house, ripped right out of this Dust Bowl setting, but is surprisingly home to objects such as laptop computers and gadgets that can take over observation drones. The look of space is the true visual treat here, however. These are images that you can feel. Going through the wormhole was just like going into hyperspace in Star Wars, giving me the closest sensation I can ever have to experiencing that original trilogy in theaters. The obvious comparisons will be made to Gravity, the space technical showcase that took home almost every technical award at the Oscars last year. These two films, which should not compared on a story level (Gravity had no story whatsoever), have no business being compared on a visual level either. Gravity's aim was to put you in a situation that you know people have experienced (working on the ISS and floating through space) whereas Interstellar's aim is to take you on a journey through theories about where space can lead us, allowing Nolan's visual ideas to take full form. Again, to spoil more of the visuals would be to spoil an essential part of the movie. As is common with Nolan films, the acting here is typically great. McConaughey continues his hot streak of performances with another good one. It won't get him any Oscar nominations or anything like that, but it serves the movie well and gives us a very relatable character to empathize with on our journey through the film. Michael Caine does his thing, and it was a pleasant surprise to see John Lithgow as the grandfather. I personally am not a big Anne Hathaway fan and so I really didn't pay attention to her when she was onscreen. I feel terrible saying this but you could have put any other large name actress (Natalie Portman, Sandra Bullock, or Rachel McAdams, to name a few) in the same role and gotten the exact same performance. Nothing special brought to the role, but it was serviceable. The real stars of the Interstellar show though are Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy, who play Murph and Young Murph, respectively. Foy absolutely kills it as Cooper's daughter. I believe that it is her performance that sells us on the father-daughter relationship that we see literally traverse the boundaries of time. With that traversing comes Chastain. This lady is ridiculously good and it is one of the great sins of modern cinema that she is not more recognized. Any other actress would have played the part, but not nearly as subtly, destroying the real emotion the character feels. This would have made the movie feel overly sentimental and not nearly as investing. While I am hoping she gets a Best Supporting Actress nomination, it is probably just a hopeful dream. There are a few flaws to this film, ones that it can't escape, unfortunately. The most obvious one would be is that is a very long film. At nearly three hours, I kept checking my watch, especially near the end of the movie. While a film can be however long it wants and doesn't need to be a Patton-esque masterwork to justify a long run time, the ideas and characters at work in the movie have to be compelling enough to propel the plot forward enough to justify that running time. What happens in Interstellar is that the ideas that are developed and ran with only take the film so far. The ones that are underdeveloped and left behind could have been expanded on in order to keep the audience more invested during the run time. With that comes my second, and perhaps biggest, issue with the movie. About halfway through, there is this idea dropped by Hathaway's character that seems completely out of place and literally made me turn to my friend and say "Did this movie just take a 180?" At the risk of spoilers, I have to mention it. The astronauts are debating which planet to go to next, as they only have enough resources to check out one of a possible two. One of the planets apparently has Hathaway's lover, an astronaut sent before Cooper and his team to colonize the surface, trapped on it. There was no mention of this earlier in the movie, which makes Hathaway's character's heavy handed speech about love even more awkwardly placed. This idea is then under baked for the rest of the movie, being brought up a few times, just so the audience doesn't forget about it rather than becoming the central idea that is run with. Love across time is an interesting concept, but the movie's focus remains squarely on saving mankind, with the love angle forcibly shoehorned into dialogue, which was very distracting and hurt the overall flow of the film. One last gripe is that while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (believe me, I do it all the time), some of these sequences feel like they were literally ripped out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially a scene at the climax of the film where McConaughey traverses time. Regardless of these issues, Interstellar is still a great film, and one that absolutely demands to be seen in the theater. It is available in IMAX 3D, IMAX, or regular viewing. I saw it on regular viewing, and was surprised to learn I was watching a 35mm print. Anywho, this film is a faithful call back to the blockbusters of the 1970s. Unfortunately, the script eventually buckles under its own weighty ideas, complete with a healthy dose of plot holes. It is still a visual marvel and I recommend it to anybody with a hankering for escapism. My rating, according to the IMDb scale, is 8/10.
