Review: INTERSTELLAR

INTERSTELLAR  (SCI-FI/ADVENTURE) 
2.5 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Bill Irwin (voice), Josh Stewart (voice)
Rated PG-13 for some intense perilous action and brief strong language.
169 minutes
Verdict: An embarrassment of visual and intellectual riches, Christopher Nolan's newest and most ambitious film to date is almost outdone by a failure to sustain itself with as much success on the human level.
YOU MAY ENJOY INTERSTELLAR IF YOU LIKED:
INCEPTION  (2010)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY  (1968)
CONTACT  (1997)
SILENT RUNNING  (1972)
PROMETHEUS  (2012)

Christopher Nolan's newest and certainly most ambitious film, INTERSTELLAR, is at once awe-inspiring and maddening, both emotions that arise frequently and potently throughout the nearly three-hour running time.  INTERSTELLAR is a project that's been around for a good while now, since 2006, and began as a treatment by theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, to be directed by none other than Steven Spielberg.  Those plans timed out, and by then, Nolan had wrapped up his best known work, The Dark Knight Trilogy.  Nolan's reputation is practically that of the savior of blockbuster filmmaking; in an age of high value brand adaptations when every major and mini-major studio is looking for the next big franchise, Nolan has proved to be the exception to the role.  Nolan is the director who can get a studio to finance a wholly original, intellectually demanding tent-pole picture made for a budget north of $150 million, and what's more, he can do it while raking in highly profitable grosses.  So far, this reputation is attributable for the most part to a single film, 2010's INCEPTION, which Nolan was able to do thanks to the unqualified success of THE DARK KNIGHT, and because he agreed to do THE DARK KNIGHT RISES next for Warner Brothers.  But INCEPTION alone had that kind of impact, grossing $825 million worldwide to become one of the top fifty highest-grossing films of all time, earning universal acclaim and four Academy Awards.  Plus, even if they were adapted from a highly popular comic book character the Dark Knight films, especially THE DARK KNIGHT, flew against expectations by crafting the comic book property into gritty and adult psychological crime-thrillers.  As the slogan of his fiercely devoted, arguably too devoted, fanbase declares, "In Nolan We Trust".
INTERSTELLAR has ambition in droves, but as it builds its massive mind-labyrinth in a plot that literally spans time and space, it inadvertently walls itself in, unable to sustain its unwieldy objectives.  It doesn't help that for all the script's intellectual showboating, it fails to piece together the necessary human drama effectively, resulting in clunky conventions and maudlin sentimentality.
It takes place in the near future, where agriculture has been devastated by a planet-wide blight, turning Earth into a global Dust Bowl.  Matthew McConaughey is Cooper, a former test pilot for NASA who now farms corn, one of the few crops that still grows at all, while raising two kids, Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and Tom (Timothee Chalamet), with his late wife's dad, Donald (John Lithgow).  Corn is on the downturn too though, and in a couple generations, Earth will no longer be inhabitable for mankind.  Cooper is given the opportunity to save the human race by piloting an experimental spacecraft, with a crew of Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway),  physicist Dr. Romily (David Gyasi), geographer Dr. Doyle (Wes Bentley) and two multipurpose robots, TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) and CASE (voiced by Josh Stewart), into a newly-discovered wormhole near Saturn to discover a new planet in another galaxy suitable for human colonization.  The journey will take years, forcing them to leave their families in hopes of giving them a future, while scientists on Earth (including performances by Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine and Toper Grace) work to develop a solution to moving all of the human race off the planet.

That's the basic premise anyway, there's an awful lot more to it that ought not to be divulged, but it really delves deep into concepts of time relativity, theoretical gravitational physics, black holes, wormholes and other intense astrophysical sciences from the Kip Thorne school of thought (Kip Thorne was an adviser on the production and is credited as an executive producer).  It's not quite as successful at presenting these concepts in a way understandable for mass appeal as INCEPTION was, so a lot of it comes across as the typical science fiction "science mumbo-jumbo", although when it stops talking about  theories and starts showing them, it works a lot better.
The mission robots, TARS and CASE deserve special notice for their unique, difficult to describe but simple design (essentially four metal planks attached lengthwise with magnetic joints, appearing like a big rectangle with mobile pieces), that are just marvelous to watch, although their very straightforward dialogue and blocky appearance feel very much out of a 1970s sci-fi film, for better or worse.  The film as a whole sometimes feels like a cult classic science fiction film, the sort that were made in the Seventies, like SILENT RUNNING or THE BLACK HOLE, sci-fi with a more serious bent than the crowd-pleasing STAR WARS, but an unintentionally goofy sensibility.
The visuals are spectacular and very thrilling, even outside of an IMAX theater (which is Nolan's personally-championed medium), making a compelling case for the immersive power of the right visuals to exceed the spectacle of any stereoscopic 3D.  The massive tidal waves of a foreign plant, or the bizarre patterns of a spherical wormhole are dizzying and uniquely breathtaking.  It seems such a shame that a film with so much worth applauding, from embracing complex scientific theory in a major original Hollywood film to the uninhibited scope, that its shortcomings should be so detrimental.  It's a movie that almost makes you feel guilty for not loving it.
While the craft and intelligence of Nolan's past films has been undeniable, they've also been characterized by a cold intellectualism and thus a shortage of humanity.  He tried for something more emotional in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, which, for a few reasons, was a little bit of a descent in quality from INCEPTION and THE DARK KNIGHT.  INTERSTELLAR is his most sentimental, emotion-driven and optimistic film to date, but unfortunately, it makes one wonder if maybe he was holding back before from the acknowledgement of his own limitations.
INTERSTELLAR is worth seeing for the sake of its many talking points, and there's some pretty great thrills too, but when you're talking three hours of running time, it would be nice if the experience was more fulfilling.