Rating: 2 out of 5 stars (for effort, I guess?)
"Interstellar," directed by Christopher Nolan, tries to be many things at once: a sci-fi epic, a family drama, a time-travel thriller and a philosophical treatise on the meaning of love. It succeeds at none of them.
A group of astronauts sets out to find a new home for humanity after Earth becomes uninhabitable. Sounds exciting, right? Wrong. Instead of thrilling space adventures we get endless scenes of characters staring pensively into the distance, delivering dialogue that sounds lifted from a college philosophy textbook.
The plot jumps back and forth in time and space with little regard for logic. The characters are underdeveloped and their motivations are never fully explained, except love, which is explained at length, by Anne Hathaway, as a physical force.
Matthew McConaughey, usually a charismatic presence, seems lost and confused throughout. Anne Hathaway is both melodramatic and wooden, and Jessica Chastain's character is so underdeveloped she might as well not be in the movie at all.
The special effects are impressive, but they can't save the film. The pacing is glacial, the dialogue is pretentious, and the tone is relentlessly grim. By the end credits you feel more exhausted than entertained, and, by my calculations, seven years older.
