Matthew McConaughey (center) and colleagues explore a water planet
“INTERSTELLAR” My rating: B- (Now playing wide)
169 minutes | Audience rating: PG-13
Did I miss something?
Because while I don’t regret having spent three hours watching Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” I can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s less here than meets the eye.
That maybe the Emperor has no clothes.
The film has an epic scope, great visuals, good performances and a payload of scientific/metaphysical ideas percolating throughout.
And unlike many of Nolan’s efforts (among them the most recent incarnation of Batman, “The Prestige” and “Inception”), it has a backbone of genuine emotion.
But why, when the lights came up, was my reaction more “meh” than “wow”?
The film begins in a not-too-distant future. Earth is rapidly dying. Corn is about the only crop not devastated by blight and massive dust storms.
Former astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConauhey) works a farm in what might be eastern Colorado. A widower, Coop lives with his father-in-law (John Lithgow) and his two kids. He’s got a special relationship with Murph (Mackenzie Foy), a fiercely intelligent girl who reports ghostly goings-on in her room, with books being pulled from the selves by invisible hands.
Jessica Chastain…back home on a ravaged Earth
This activity and other clues lead Coop and Murph to a secret base in the mountains where what’s left of NASA (as far as the public knows the program has been shut down) is working on a project to save humanity.
Coop’s old mentor Professor Brand (Michael Caine…always the voice of reason in Nolan movies) explains that a decade earlier a human crew was sent into space, through a wormhole near Saturn, and into another galaxy to look for Earth-like planets to which humanity might migrate.
That earlier mission is presumed lost. Now a second is being mounted. Coop’s arrival is serendipitous — he was NASA’s best pilot — and he is recruited to head the new effort.
But that means saying goodbye to Murph, who is angry and devastated by what she sees as a betrayal by her beloved father.
This takes up “Interstellar’s” first hour. The rest of the film alternates between the mission in space and the lives of Coop’s family back on Earth.
Butler's Cinema Scene 