By Christian Horgan.
When it comes to films, director Christopher Nolan (Inception, Batman Begins) doesn't do small, and his latest creation Interstellar is stellar in a lot of ways. Firstly, it runs big… 169 minutes big. Secondly, it's budget big… $165-million big. It's big on cast… Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Caine and Matt Damon big. And it's big on plot… lets save the planet big.
The film is set in the not too distant future, where our planet has been devastated by drought and famine. We're on the verge of living in one big dustbowl. If we don't find a solution fast, our species is doomed.
Finding a solution now rests with NASA, which finds itself acting as an underground group as you can't be seen spending money on space programs when the planet is starving. Michael Caine plays a brilliant scientist who comes up with the plan to recolonise other parts of the universe. His daughter is a scientist set to man the colonising spacecraft, and retired pilot Matthew McConaughey is brought in to steer humanity into its future.
I've got to admit, I don't salivate at the thought of Sci-Fi, but if it's kept simple, and you throw in some special effects, you can hook me. There are lots of special effects in this film, but they were done better in last year's hit flick Gravity. As for keeping things simple, there were times I felt I was getting a bit of a science lesson. There are black holes, time warps anew planets and hints of the supernatural woven through the plot. There are also strong emotional threads, mainly through the relationship McConaughey's character has with his daughter, which extends beyond space and time.
Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan Nolan originally started writing this story for Steven Spielberg. Somehow it became a Nolan vehicle, with Christopher becoming co-writer. That might be where the problem lies for me. Sometimes big isn't always best. This film was always going to be big, but somehow I think the storylines became too big. There's just a little too much going on, and the plot is full of holes. Not quite black holes, but holes nevertheless. This film will appeal more to die-hard Sci-Fi fans, the ones who don't need a science class refresher to understand the plot, and who'll love analysing it after the credits roll. 3.5 stars.
