And Interstellar is still fresh in mind. And before I begin, a disclaimer: This review by no means implies I didn't get the movie or I'm less smart than anyone else. Let's just keep the opinions for the end of the review.. Boy! Can I make a mountain of a mole :P
Being married brings with itself a lot of work, enough for you to "rarify" your weekend outings from every weekend during courtship to can't remember the last movie we had seen weekends. Long and short of it, the movies have to be really epic to make us(him) move.
It goes without doubt that this movie has all the right ingredients to excite a Nolan fan: that it's his movie. And then he says I'm brand crazy ("Mirror"). And it also meant that we had to watch the movie the same day it got out. We were three of us, Him, My brother and I.
We took the last show, we entered the hall and it was a nerd heaven out there! Anyway, doesn't help much that we were stuffed till the neck when we got into the hall (It's important to know, You'll see how). Now finally I will get to the movie, to the oldies talking on the screen about the dust and corn everywhere. The house, and the fact that they still drink beer (hopefully it's maize beer.. I read somewhere in one of the nerd showing off how cool he is to point out Nolan's bloopers saying how can you make beer when there is no wheat.. you don't have to be book wise to know everything.. mostly practical experiences beat all theoretical knowledge.. get what I mean? Of course you do!).
The first half is just a drag, on this even the nerd husband agrees. I mean the movie implies that the NASA even though it's conducting it's operations in secret and everything so short of resources that they would ask a guy who just happened to get to their location to fly off to a mission. Of course he did spend a dedicated first hour establishing that how into science he was and how he had secretly revolutionized his farm to harvest bumper yields, but then the NASA had never visited his farms how did they know? For all the reason and science their belief in him was also a hunch (Yes! It could have also been an enemy country's evil plan to infiltrate their territory with a mole, but the very best (leftover) brains in NASA didn't even consider that possibility). The man even in the scientific days of mankind barely got off the ground. NASA's belief one side, is it really that easy to convince a father of two with no one else but his visibly wasting dad after him agree so easily to give it all up for such a thing? Just because they convinced him that was the only way to save the world, the a very bleak chance to even get back in time to help his family.
Any way both of them take the leap of faith, so much physics jargon and through all this time I'm wondering looking at all their faces how they have aged.. seriously I just couldn't help drawing comparisons with "The princess diaries", "The wedding planner". Age has seriously started showing and how!!! While absorbing their old age and embracing myself for mine, I hear someone snoring (here is where the heavy dinner info comes in) and that's my brother :) .. I wake him up just in time for the interval. I will have to agree here that movie does get interesting, both plot wise and visually, once they fly off.
While my brother and I were discussing the movie, on what would happen next. A weirdo who had come all alone to watch the movie, says "Excuse Me, I can hear you.." I was in a serious mood for some smart replies like "Oh can you really now? For somebody who's such a good listener how come you're alone here?" But then I checked myself thinking it will take away some precious movie minutes from him and then he'll have to watch the movie all over again as he would have failed to follow the rest as it is it looked like he was putting in way too much effort!
Moving on...
I really was impressed at the various representations of the new planets, and how it scared the living hell out of me when that giant wave took the most invisible person of the group away, little confession, drowning is by far my worst fear right after being hit by a car, falling off a high rise building, being eaten up by a dog infected with rabies. The snow clad planet with the evil Damon (Why so old why?!?) was pretty too. And where our hero is flapping around for the lack of oxygen was somehow funny, no I'm not a sadist, of course I knew he couldn't die just yet the world hadn't been saved till then :)
What really puzzled me was the fact that how could they have assumed that if the transmitter was sending signals it meant their could be life on the planet? Had they not seen enough sci-fi movies earlier to know that technology always fails at the most fool proof scenarios? And humans by their very nature are selfish?
Any how.. The best and the worst part of it all was the climax.. so it was him all along who the NASA referred to as "they are helping us" or what I referred to as the hunch. "Kartik Calling Kartik" from future much?
I mean really? Of all the brains and all the alternate reality, you could add in any extreme explanation to it, for me I expected something less rudimentary than what bollywood has already come up with, or a physicists version of Ghost of the Christmas Future. You know it made me feel like all the intuitions I generally get is the future me (preferably from a black hole ) warning me against a mishap, and like the mcConaughey of the past, did I always ignore.
And also one more thing I noticed, Nolan does have something for a world which is upside down, he imagined the new planet to be such and I also remember him showing a similar dream world in Inception as well. But well.. who am I to draw similarities I'm not a Nolan fan, nor am I a physicist, or a qualified psychiatrist. I'm just a nerd's wife who like talking way too much :)
Well there you have it: A non geek reviews a movie she wasn't very excited to watch in the first place. But let me be honest here, it was worth the watch, and unlike inception where there was a lot of thinking involved this one was fairly simple to understand even with it's complex gravity, time and distance concepts. If for nothing else, it's good that I did watch it to know what the whole hullabaloo is all about.. Thanks to the nerd husband I'm not left out, and neither is my sleepy bro ;)
