Movie Review: Interstellar

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A movie with mostly good science!  Decent story, if a little overwrought.  Magnificent scenery.  IMAX sound adds to the enjoyment.  Questionable ending.

“Interstellar” is a beautiful movie.  It paints a stark, somewhat believable future and throws us on a last-ditch effort to save humanity.  From the Earth, to space, to planets both known and unknown, to black holes, it is gorgeous.  But a gorgeous movie doesn’t necessarily mean a good movie.  So how does this one hold up?  Meh, it was decent.

On some level, I must have liked it because its two hour and forty-five minute run time did not feel like it at all.  The plot interesting and doesn’t really slow down.  There are some things that bothered me like how can you not know the basic composition of a planet prior to landing on it?  Or how can a habitable planet orbit so close to a black hole that it brings relativity into play?  The former, I am almost sure is possible today, the latter, I may just not know enough about planetary formation.  These things can be forgiven because they lead to some spectacular what-if situations that will mess with your mind.  I’m also pretty sure there’s a fairly large plot hole in the film, but I’d have to rewatch it to be sure.

And then there’s the ending.  It seems as if it were tacked on to make the movie a little more feel-good.  I won’t spoil anything, but the decisions that were made seem both unlikely and unnecessary.  There wasn’t much of an emotional attachment to make the decision that was made and there seemed to be plenty of other options available that would be much more palatable.  Oh, and don’t even get me started on the whole cause-effect stuff that ties everything together.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome sound in the movie.  I watched the movie in one of those almost-but-not-quite-IMAX theaters where the sound quality is excellent and the screen is larger than normal, but not true IMAX size.  The sound in this movie adds much to this adventure.  When ships are taking off, you actually feel like you’re taking off with them, minus the 10 G-forces.  For this reason, I would highly recommend you watch the movie in as high quality a theater as possible.

All things considered,I enjoyed the movie and would recommend that anyone who has a hankerin’ for space go see it in the theater.  Others, I’m not sure about.  I think this is a good general audience movie, but can’t subjectively say if the non-space loving general public will enjoy it.

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