Intersteller Snoozing

Rule of thumb for moviemakers of big, block-busting Sci-Fi/Fantasy-type movies like the new Intersteller: 

Don't 'splain too much. 

Just toss out some reasonably techy-sounding argle-bargle, then get on it with it!  This is a Sci-Fi blockbuster, not a Stephen Hawking lecture.  There will be no test waiting n the lobby after the movie is over.  Plus, your audience has already seen enough Star Trek episodes that they already "get" all the time travel concepts needed to keep your basic story coherent.  Anything more is TMI and acts as a ginormous lead-footed Yak-Yak-Yak-Yak brake on a story that should be racing ahead at the speed of light.

And, Do Not, under any circumstance, have your various protagonists endlessly 'splaining lots of complicated quantum physics, time-travel concepts, and even expository plot points while engaged in a life and death struggle on the ledge of a snowy precipice.  Seriously?

Plus, most SciFi/Fantasy moviegoers have learned long ago:  Don't ask.  


And watch the music.  A Mormon Tabernacle-sized pipe organ operating full blast at every conceivable "dramatic moment" needlessly blows your audience out of their chairs and turns your movie into a comic thunderous mashup of Monty Python Meets Phantom of the Opera TA-DAH! moments.

New Times reviewer Jessica Pena ends her recent review by noting that "The story may be contrived, the dialogue may be clunky, but there are things in this movie you won't see anywhere else, and that makes Intersteller a significant achievement." While co-reviewer Rhys Heyden notes, "Every even year since 2006, everyone's favorite writer-director of humorless yet undeniably majestic magna opera has graced us with another one of his films.  . . . [which] is classic Nolan, playing to all of his strengths and acccentuating his weak spots."

Well, faint praise, but that about says it all.

And, spoiler alert, the world gets saved and love triumphs.  TA-DAH!