Interstellar

Film (2014)

With Matthew McConaughey (Cooper), Anne Hathaway (Amelia), Jessica Chastain (Murph), Matt Damon (Dr. Mann), Mackenzie Foy (Young Murph), Michael Caine (Professor Brand), Casey Affleck (Tom), Ellen Burstyn (Old Murph), John Lithgow (Donald), Bill Irwin (TARS – voice), William Devane (NASA Board Member)

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a farmer, but not really. Everyone is a farmer in this day and age in the unspecified future, because space travel has been subverted. But, in the midst of farming disasters, Cooper has time to ride roughshod over the cornfields with his two kids in tow and chase some kind of drone. After that, he reads a Morse Code message in dust patterns left after a storm and, though his kids are very upset and he’s a single parent relying on his aged father-in-law to help rear them, he signs up for a space mission from which he may never return – Uh-oh. And that’s only the beginning.

If you want a real hearty laugh, go see this film, but don’t put yourself through the whole thing unless you come with earplugs. The sound track for this film is so loud it makes your seat rumble. I had to hold my hands over my ears through much of it. The film is funny in the way that Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) is funny. It’s so awkwardly put together, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually believing this cinematic vessel could float, much less make it through a wormhole.

Along this intergalactic journey one encounters so many Hollywood stars that the ones in space readily pale by comparison. I couldn’t believe the line-up when I saw it, and, after seeing the film, I can’t believe it had so much bright talent and came out being so dim.

One assumes that all science fiction is going to have some weirdly finessed form of science in it, but the script for this escapade has so much conceptually warped stuff – bent not only by time, but by seeming lack of time taken to work it over – that it’s really hard to swallow any of it. Add to the preposterousness of the writing an editing job that interleaves remote sequences so liberally, one easily loses ones way in this tangled tale. Apparently, noted theoretical physicist Kip Thorne served as a consultant and executive producer for this film, a thought which I have some trouble bending my mind around.

Christopher Nolan, the director and co-author of the screenplay, did Memento (2000) which was intriguing and well-done, and all of the Batman (2005, 2008, 2012) films which were not too bad and which earned him considerable commercial success.

I did walk out of the film with a friend who is a science fiction buff and he loved it. Despite that, I can’t imagine going through a mental warp that would enable me to develop much appreciation for this work. I am frequently amazed by the wide variation in tastes, but is it possible he saw a different film than I did, even though we were sitting together in the same theater? That is the most compelling evidence of a wormhole I can find here.

– BADMan