My Thoughts on Interstellar

I don't often feel compelled to write about movies I watch.  But when I do, it's probably because it wasn't a good movie.  For better or worse, it is way easier for me to write about a movie that is not very good and I know exactly why I think it's not very good than to write about an average movie or a good movie.  Even if I know why those movies are good, it's usually not that interesting and it's hard to be more specific than "this part of the movie was good."

Interstellar was not a good movie.  I am truly bewildered by the IMDB score of 8.6 (though IMDB has a weird... thing about Christopher Nolan.  All of his movies are overrated by that site), the critical rating of 74/100 by Metascore, the Rotten Tomatoes of 71% and the 85% of the audience on Rotten Tomatoes who liked the film.  I feel like I watched a different movie than all of these people.  It's not that I don't think I can have a different opinion from the consensus, I'm just not completely sure how people came away from this movie liking it.

This movie is boring.  It's ridiculously slow for most of the movie's running time.  The score is overwhelming in a bad way.  It's really long.  I'm sure all the space stuff is inaccurate, though I honestly don't care.  There's a TON of clunky exposition and nonsense technical jargon.  I'm trying to figure out just how exactly bad this movie would be if Matthew McConaughey wasn't in it.  If this movie fails to be good, he sure as hell doesn't.  (All the actors are pretty good)

All of the above can be somewhat forgiven.  It's not the first good movie that is slow or seemingly too long.  It's definitely not the only movie that seems pretty inaccurate.  Clunky exposition and technical jargon is a tradeoff to getting to the point of the movie faster (which, this movie STILL takes forever despite the sheer amount of exposition and/or meaningless "science" stuff that is said).  But what can't be forgiven is one of the worst endings I have ever seen.  It ruined everything that came before.

Call me twisted, but I would have been very ok if the movie just ended with Cooper dying in space, sacrificing himself so that Brand could very unlikely see her husband.  I would have called this an average movie with great visuals, amazing acting, and good direction.  But... whatever the fuck happened after that is just... awful.  I still don't really understand what happened.  Don't explain it to me either.  It's all bullshit.  He communicated with his daughter in space through I assume a black hole because....... yeah I don't know.  There's not really a logic to it.  Then he gets rescued of all fucking things.  If you're gonna have a bullshit ending where he somehow helps save the world, at least let him be a martyr.

I feel like there are certain movies that get better reviews than the quality of the movie because if you have a checklist of what makes a movie great, it fills enough boxes to at warrant two stars.  You feel guilty giving a well-directed, well-acted film anything below 2 stars because it is well-directed and well-acted.  Most of the time, this correlates to a good movie.  Sometimes, it leads to a movie getting infinitely better reviews than it deserves, because like I said, if a movie is well-directed and well-acted, you expect it to be good.

Interstellar is the exception and my theory above is the only reason I can fathom that it got good reviews.  It didn't get great reviews, but it did get good enough reviews where I would watch a movie based on those reviews.  I don't know.  I just can't put into words my confusion.  There are movies where after watching it, I understand why my opinion diverges from the public or the critics.  This is not one of those movies.  I "know" a movie that critics will tend to overrate and I "know" a movie that the public will overrate.  This doesn't seem like either movie though.  It seems too boring and long for the public to love it, and its ending seems like an awful enough one that I don't know how any critic gave this a great review.  I will never not be confused about this movie, because I do not ever plan on watching this movie again.

1.5/4 stars