Why Interstellar Sucks

Tuesday, December 02, 2014 K.Z. Freeman 4 Comments

The characters in this movie are eggs. Want a real character? Egg. Oh, sorry, did you get an egg? That's my fault. Sorry about that. Here's more egg.

 That's the short review. Read on if you must...
The only thing missing from this movie is Morgan Freeman suddenly appearing and narrating the procedure of popping a piece of meat on a pan to sear the shit out of it.

The movie itself has all the right things, but that doesn't make it any less bad as it feels completely engineered to have “all the right things” which are suppose to make a movie immersive and good. Yet the amount of disbelief I was expected to suspend in order not to roll my eyes every 10 minutes is more disbelief than I could possibly attain. At one point I just couldn't help but go, “What The Fuuuuuuuck.” 
I don’t think the people around me appreciated my sudden outburst.

There are things which writers do to hook you into their characters. A verity of plot devices and all sorts of “poor him/her” techniques. A skilled writer will do this so that you won’t know that it is happening. Or will use a technique that is unconventional.

So the question is, if you are completely aware of what’s going on and what is the purpose of the scenes you are watching or reading, can you still “get into them”?
My answer is No, you cannot.

Upon reflecting a little bit, the main issue became that the whole thing didn't feel like a “happening”, but an engineered set-piece after set-piece progressing at a pace that was suddenly rapid then slowed to a painful crawl. In this movie the set-pieces were blatantly obvious and really kind of dull. But to truly give you a taste of how absurd this movie is, I will need to write an equally absurd review.

But before I get to it, let me state that this will contain total spoilers. But to spoil something it needs to be good in the first place. Can you really spoil something that is already bad? I’ll let you figure that out by yourself.





The movie begins with a sort of typical american setting that’s suppose to make you wonder what’s going on. It doesn't. 

 Everyone is a farmer but everyone is still starving. Nice. 
This time, McConaughey is a slightly more “normal” version of Mud, but only slightly. 

So Mud is driving through the cornfield at speed and does something on his laptop without any apparent difficulty. Here we establish the fact that he is pro at multitasking and so the scenes ahead are completely reasonable, since he is just that good. This scene also nicely establishes that Mud is a bit different in this movie. In this movie, he is Boss. You try going 90 through a cornfield while hacking into a satellite/drone via your 21 century laptop!

After the acquisition of said drone and discovering that his field is actually a secret NASA facility, Mud promptly decides he must leave his kids to save humanity. 

He is chosen by Alfred (an actor Nolan seems to enjoy giving the same roles in every movie - which really helps with my suspension of disbelief and general immersion, it really does) to blast off with Catwoman in a reasonably 20th century 3-stage rocket that will dock with an incredibly advanced 22nd century space station/fuckden. 

As the merry band ventures upon their merry journey, they need no longer adhere to primitive Earth technology. Now they can do anything they ever did on Star Trek, including Cryo-Sleep, while the Earth is... well... pretty much screwed. Honestly, I don’t really know what the heck was the problem on Earth. Earth has problems, we all know that, right? Apparently the current problems are pretty big, big enough for them to send a person that oddly feels incompetent for the job he was tasked to do.

They emerge from deep slumber feeling like fresh daises, and proceed  to a wormhole that Alfred and the other Dude told them about. 

Guess what they used to explain how the “bending of space works”... Come on, guess! It was by bending a sheet of paper. Riveting stuff.

Anywho... their hopes are to find a new planet where people can live and not die on Earth. There is a sort of Plan Z, but apparently that will not work because Muddy is in a mad hurry to get back to Earth. No worries, Plan A will work and everyone will be saved by He Who Talks The Same Way In Every Movie. I was expecting him to pull out a cigarette in hyperspace to do one of his, “I’m so cool while smoking this I don’t give a fuck”.

What can I say about Mud’s robotic bro? He is amazing! He can navigate through zero gravity, run across fields, even walk on water, not to mention rescue damsels in distress while pumping on the charm that is sure to amaze any female.

After the wormhole, they go to a planet where the laws of physics are a thing of myth and legend. Each hour they spend equals 17BAZILLION years on Earth and the whole planet is one big puddle.

Back on Earth, the rest of the poor sods are ageing rapidly in their trucks and other quaint remnants of the 20th century. It’s all Mud’s fault really, and so we go through painful displays of human idiocy. I suppose the reason why Mud's daughter  must be saved is so that Mud can chill and not worry about his daughter thinking he is a total douche for all eternity, just because he did not stay behind and instead opted to SAVE HER WHINY ASS ALONG WITH EVERYONE ELSE.

The watery planet sucked, so Mud and Catwoman go to an even crappier one that seems even worse than Earth, yet they feel super psyched that this might be it. Perhaps they shall find a cosy place down under the frozen fucking ammonia glaciers. 

They are found by Matt Damon's dad who is vaguely evil and decides to blow stuff up now. His reasons are reasons. After Mud the amazing tackles Matt Damon’s father, he decides that he shall be even more amazing and fly into the black hole. Yay and off he goes onto the back of his trusty steed, his charming robot chum. Adventure and great fun is sure to ensue!

Something happens that is totally brilliant (probably quantum) and somehow Mud ends up tripping his balls off in five-dimensional space, yet his Self remains wholly three dimensional. Logic.  Oh, and because Aliens. 

With the help of Hans Zimmer, Mud floats around in an empty library, still tripping his quantum balls off. There are stacks of his past selves which make him go through all these feels. Poor lad.

Mud's now grown-up daughter back on Earth also goes through all these feels and, fuelled by what must be some mad PMS, tells her brother to screw himself for not joining her in her cave, then torches her bro's corn crop. Damn, girl. Then she begins fooling around in the old family library, the same one that Mud is trapped behind the stacks in his five dimensional bachelor pad, except Mud’s library is made by humans from the future. At least that's what the robot said. I told you his robot bro is amazing. Then suddenly! while pondering a wristwatch, the now grown daughter realizes that gravity is the way to go.

Lots of good opportunities to cry here as we witness the powerless Mud screaming at the versions of his daughter and having epiphanies left and right. Again, quite suddenly and because, dammit, it’s almost the end of the movie and the plot demands it! Mud gets a Dr.House ZING and he tells the robot to get binary and convert the 'quantum data' into Morse code so that he can gravity-emote it to the wristwatch that his daughter is totally tripping on. Wait a second, did that wristwatch just move? It did! Obviously the movements are coded gravity-signals coming through the black-hole bookshelf and are send by her five-dimensional papi! Amazing!

So... the real-time daughter trans-codes the Quantum “code” and saves the world.

Years later the really ancient daughter cryo-naps in the hope of seeing Mud again. They figure out how to make space rockets and go fetch Muddy so he can come back and be ignored by everybody he saved. Apparently, ancient daughter wakes up and figures it is just so much easier to go to Saturn in her hospital bed. A bunch of other family members go with her and gather around her bed where they prepare to sacrifice her sweet soul to lord Satan. OK maybe not. 
When Mud comes in to check on his ancient daughter, they decide to walk out without even glancing at him, even though he is their great grandfather and saved all of their futuristic assess.

More delicious tears as dad and daughter weep and so do you. After an appropriate interval, daughter wisely informs papa to go and be free, since she is no longer suffering from her wild PMS and she’s now cool with her bro. She points out that he should perhaps totally steal a spaceship to try and win Catwoman back. Mud agrees because Catwoman is pretty hot.


The End.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous18 December, 2014

    Hahahaha what the fuck dude

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown23 January, 2015

    Love it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous01 February, 2015

    best review on the net. Where did he spend all that money? I FF thru most of it and saw only head shots and a couple CG icey stuffs !

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown04 January, 2016

    Late to the game, but I just caught the movie yesterday. So glad I didn't spend actual dosh on it. Best review eva, by the way. The thing I kept thinking was that these 5-dimensional alien superbeings could have pointed their perv scopes anywhere anytime, but they *had* to peer right into a pre-teen girl's bedroom. I think the Feds need to look into these aliens. Mulder and Scully?

    (No, it doesn't make it any better that the aliens were trans-trans-trans-humans from the fu-fu-future. Or whatever.)

    ReplyDelete

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