Cast: Nolan has reached the point where everyone seems to want to work with him, and he also has a familiar rotation of actors he likes to work with. The movie sinks or swims according to how Matthew McConaughey does in it and the McConaissance continues. He sells every emotional beat and awkward bit of dialogue. Without him holding it together, I'm pretty sure the movie falls apart. Mackenzie Foy is a child actor who is now on my radar, playing the younger version of Jassica Chastain, who's excellent too. Anne Hathaway doesn't have the meatiest role, but she does what is needed. Michael Caine and John Lithgow fill the "wise old man" quota. Casey Affleck and Topher Grace just look happy to be in the movie, no matter the size of the roles. There's a significant role later in the movie that they've been keeping pretty quiet about. I don't understand the secrecy around it, but I won't spoil it either.
Plot: The Earth is falling apart. There's a blight (as it is called) that's ruining crops and basically causing people's days left on Earth to be numbered. Instead of looking for the next thing to improve our lives, people are stuck trying to sustain. In short, farmers are wanted, engineers are not. McConaughey ends up with Anne Hathaway and others on a secret NASA mission to find a suitable replacement for Earth. Foy and Chastain play McConaughey's daughter at different stages (he's gone for a while). I wish there was more to the plot than that. There's not a singular hook to it and that's a shame for a movie that runs nearly three hours. It tries a bit too hard to explain the science of it all and ends up too confusing for the unacquainted and too simplistic for those who do understand (I'm the former, so I'm guessing about the latter). Since it's trying to tell a much bigger story than it can, the third act ends up sneaking in a rather easy solution to it all that was nearly a cop out (It reminded my way too much of Signs). I don't mean to suggest that it is a movie I disliked, but I want to make it clear that the screenplay has some issues that the rest of the movie makes up for.
Elephant in the Room: What did they say? I don't know if Christopher Nolan doesn't care about sound mixing or if he's more concerned with realism or something, but this is the second movie in a row of his that has some sound issue. The Dark Knight Rises had Bane's mask. Interstellar has people trying to talk while loud space ship noises are happening. It's not often that this happens during important dialogue, but you'd still like to believe they could've fixed that in post-production.
To Sum Things Up:
Interstellar is an ambitious movie. It is a very pretty movie and the actors deliver great performances, pulling off the sort of grandiose dialogue that only exists in movies this big. The screenplay is imperfect, but not bad. Nolan is still the director that I'd most trust with a $100 million budget. A movie like this is a tough egg to crack. When I say it is a lesser movie from Nolan, keep in mind that I'm saying it's below movies like The Dark Knight, Memento, and Inception. It's like being the dumb kid at Harvard. God, I hope I'm not deterring people from seeing this. I really liked it. There's just some rough edges: ones that I probably need another showing to work out.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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