Interstellar (2014)

This film should have been good, it really should have been, but it wasn't. It fell short of brilliant.
America several decades in the future is rapidly becoming a vast wasteland. Blight is killing the crops, NASA has faked the moon landing solely to bankrupt Russia and the MRI is a machine of the past. Cooper (Matthew McConaghey) is having none of that. He wants his only son to go to college, have other options in life than just being a farmer which is what his simple test scores say he will be. He wants to figure out the ghost who keeps moving books in his daughter's room. Then Coop gets a mysterious message with coordinates which lead him and young Murph (Mackenzie Foy), as in Murphy, named after the law, to the underground NASA movement led by Professor Brandt (Michael Caine). Here, they realize that the Earth is dying, thanks to the dust storms and lack of food to share. He is determined to develop a formula which will let all the citizens leave the Earth, but there is not enough gravity for this to happen. Thus, the back-up plan: bringing thousands of fertilized eggs to grow another population so the species doesn't die out.
Let me back up, NASA is launching a mission to follow-up on the planets in another galaxy. There is a wormhole near Saturn where twelve new planets exist. Each of these have been explored to see if they can sustain human life. Despite everything, including leaving his family behind, Coop decides to go, he was a pilot in the air force after all. Coop sets out with Amelia Brandt (Anne Hathaway), Professor Brandt's daughter and two others: Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Rom (David Gyasi).
They make it through the wormhole and land on the first planet where the gravity is so heavy and slow that just one hour on that planet encompasses seven Earth years. This planet is a disappointment, filled with water and huge tidal waves that are horribly destructive. The next planet is even worse, a barren tundra with amnomia for air. Dr. Mann (an uncredited Matt Damon) sent out a positive signal just so he would get rescued. Coop took a chance and now, there is only one viable planet left and not enough fuel to return home. He sends Brandt to that other planet with all the zygotes while he manages to return home through a black hole which actually turns out to be a tesseract. Time travel is involved, people. Yes, this film gets super weird really fast.
Back on Earth, decades have past. Murph (now Jessica Chastain) is all grown up, determined to help Professor Brandt solve the equation, only to have discovered he lied, there is no way to solve the gravity equation. Tom (Casey Affleck), Coop's son, is a farmer but the dreadful amounts of dust have already killed his oldest son and are slowly killing his wife and other son, named after his father. While she is gathering her stuff from her old bedroom, her father is in the tesseract and he turns out to be her ghost, forcing the books off her shelves; he told himself the area where NASA turned out to be and he solves the missing part of the equation and messages that to Murph using morse code in the watch he left with her. She solves the equation which saves everyone.
Coop wakes up in a space shuttle orbiting Saturn and sees his elderly daughter one last time before she dies, as time continues to pass. Murph (now Ellen Burstyn) urges him to go and help Amelia on her new planet which, unlike the other two, is good, crops are thriving there.
The film has several plot holes or stuff that is easily missed. How does the tesseract work, exactly? It shouldn't necessarily work the way it does. And how does gravity slow down time? How will all the fertilized eggs become people?
Whatever, though I have problems with those things what bothered me more is Hans Zimmer's overwhelming score. Sure, it's great, but it is too loud and used too frequently. Some of the lines are murmured and thus, you miss them. The acting is mediocre and these are good actors. The only good scene is when Coop returns from the first planet to find that twenty-three years have past and he catches up on all the messages he has missed. His son is now married with a family and his daughter is the same age he was when he left. That scene made me cry. However, other than that, the acting wasn't great. Hathaway was a disappointment and Chastain should have been better. The plot of the film also was unsteady, dragging at parts and then speeding up too quickly before slowing down again and then ending. Chastain isn't frantic enough when she is packing up her room, when she returns to NASA to solve the problem, the score takes over the scene, ruining her achievement. Her romance with a fellow doctor (Topher Grace) isn't developed at all. After she solves the problem, saving all living humans, she merely jumps into his arms and starts kissing him. But they must get married and have children because she does have kids, later. And what happens when Coop rejoins Amelia on the new planet?
At least this film looked good. Grade: B