Movie Review: Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is back folks. The acclaimed director’s new sci-fi, space exploration epic, Interstellar, is finally upon us. The hype behind this film has been ginormous to say the least. Shot in IMAX 70mm…on actual film! Features minimal CGI! Uses man made sets and practical effects! Academy award winning cast! Etc. etc. Does the film actually deliver? Kind of.

Matthew Mcconaughey stars as “Cooper,” a former NASA test pilot marooned on a slowly decaying American farmstead. In the not too distant future, Earth has had enough of mankind’s shit and ravaged the environment with a deadly wave of blight and dust storms, causing massive crop failures and respiratory problems up the wazoo. Our time on Earth is running low, and humans toil about their increasingly miserable lives trying to get by. Cooper begrudgingly raises his two children on his dying farm, mourning his dead wife, and extinguished dreams of exploring the stars. But thankfully, his genius daughter’s pet ghost tasks them on a crazy errand that reunites Cooper with the remnants of what used to be NASA, who’ve been literally hiding in his back yard the entire time, hatching a plan to save the human race: move to a new galaxy. Yes, you read that correctly.

wut?

Interstellar could have been a great film, instead of just a good one. Unfortunately, it’s beyond convoluted plot and insistence on ham-fisted melodrama takes the film down several pegs. The ‘wow, I can’t believe what I’m seeing!’ sense of awe that Nolan’s visuals instill throughout the film, gives way to a ‘wow…I can’t believe this is what I’m seeing,’ lament, stemming from the mediocre script. The film is long and ambitious but surprisingly, despite the ‘lol wut?’ problems with the plot, doesn’t feel like an eternity while watching. Maybe that’s because the film crams what should have been twelve hours of screen content into a mere three [we got off easy if you think about that way].

Interstellar’s ensemble cast turns out to be film’s saving grace. With so much trippy NASA jargon and space talk thrown around and tons of eye rolling exposition being spoon fed to the audience, it’s the actor’s stellar [eh eh?] performances that keeps the movie from collapsing in on itself. Matthew Mcconaughey’s character Cooper might be written as the dumbest astronaut ever [he needs diagrams to explain how wormholes work], but his performance is unyielding throughout. He spouts that dialogue, no matter how painful, like it was the word of God [or Nolan]. In fact, the scene where he watches messages from his family on Earth is some truly powerful stuff and one of the highlights of the entire film. Anne Hathaway is billed as Interstellar’s other big star, but Jessica Chastain is the movie's real leading lady. Hathaway isn’t bad per se…even though her character is written so, but Chastain’s performance is just miles beyond hers.

the real MVP

Interstellar is three hours of bizarre entertainment. If you can ignore the bloated plot and relish some solid acting and cool visuals you’ll probably have fun. It was refreshing to watch a sci-fi film with real people and not a massive CGI cartoon, just as it was cool to see Nolan finally play with a new cinematographer for a change [hello Hoyte van Hoytema, nice work dude]. There’s some really gripping, suspenseful scenes that almost make up for the bang your head against the wall stupid ones. This movie would have been a sweet ass summer time blockbuster, but since it came out in fall and is surrounded but tons of, you know, good movies; it just doesn’t hold up as well in comparison.