Review: ‘Interstellar’ From The Editor

“Interstellar” certainly looks like another home run from “Dark Knight” trilogy director Christopher Nolan, but much like “The Dark Knight Rises,” the film may be a little bit too ambitious for its own good.

Still, the space adventure starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts desperately trying to discover a new habitable planet is orbiting above the “fresh” atmosphere on critic aggregatorRotten Tomatoes with a 71 percent approval rating.

Cooper stumbles upon a secret NASA location, and they desperately ask him to go on a mission through space. What would you say if asked to fly to Mars, take a trip through a wormhole, check out other planets, and pick up lost pilots on the way while you’re at it? A very hesitant Cooper was urged to accept this mission. The reality is that if Cooper doesn’t help find humanity a new home, his children’s generation might be the last one on Earth.

Another thing to note about this mission is that time will be moving significantly slower where they are going vs here on Earth. How slow? In one planet, an hour will cost you a whopping seven years on Earth. I won’t go into other specifics to avoid spoilers, but you get the idea. The plan to save humanity was put together by the Brand’s (Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway), a physicists duo made up of a father and daughter.

But it’s in the film’s third act that the cracks begin to show. The science gets positively baffling as the conversation shifts to the fifth dimension, and Nolan takes us through a hokey climax that leaves way too many questions unanswered. At 2 hours and nearly 50 minutes, the film is a real slog occasionally and can feel like a crash course in quantum physics. The earth-bound portions are never as compelling as the space-set scenes, and one subplot involving a scientist that McConaughey and Hathaway’s characters encounter on a new planet is both cheesy and pointless.

And yet, in the end Nolan’s still given us plenty to chew on, leaving us to ponder important questions about love, sacrifice and mortality. Like ‘Inception’, this is a film that demands not just to be seen, but experienced. It’s a film that dares you to keep up with it, to navigate through all the heavy-handed cerebral exposition, to spot its many nods, particularly to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’.

In the film’s most pivotal role, Nolan gives us a credible leading man in Matthew McConaughey, who brings just the right mix of action hero gravitas and good-natured compassion. Jessica Chastain is the other standout performer here, bringing both steely resolve and unmistakable vulnerability to the part of Cooper’s hurting daughter.

As far as how long the film “Interstellar” is, well, in Earth-time terms it is pretty long – nearly three hours! Throughout the first half, there’s a lot of science-babble that might confuse the average audience. Yes, “Interstellar” is more baffling than “Inception,” but you’ll catch on. Hang tight, after taking off into space, “Interstellar” gets incredibly good. The final moments of this rollercoaster for the mind are worth the wait.

It’s safe to say that “Interstellar” is the best science-fiction film you’ll see in a while – or just one of the best movies in general. “Interstellar” is now in theaters. It is rated PG-13 for some intense perilous action and brief strong language. Running time is approximately 2 hours and 49 minutes.