Far, far away

Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster runs almost three hours and feels even longer. Interstellar’s sci-fi plot, exploration of outer space in search of a new and inhabitable home for the survivors of a dried-up Earth, seems to require the long-form treatment, especially when you factor in time-travel aspects, some elemental family drama, and an elaborately detailed preoccupation with the technologies involved.

The story, scripted by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, never stops moving, but by the time the time-travel stuff starts coming home to roost, it’s hard not to feel that there’s been an awful lot of wasted motion here. It’s certainly an impressive spectacle, but the things that you could really care about might have been better served in a two-part installment of The Outer Limits.

Interstellar also has astronauts and farmers, black holes and worm holes, cryogenics and ghosts, and a robot treated as a fledgling sidekick (and voiced by Bill Irwin). It just may be that the Nolan brothers have tried to put too much baggage aboard their bound-for-IMAX behemoth.

Matthew McConaughey has the lead role, the farmer and ex-astronaut who’s called back to duty for this desperate mission, and he’s fully functional, but never brilliant, throughout. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain have a moment or two of special intensity in their respective key roles, but like nearly everybody else in the film’s impressive-sounding cast (Michael Caine and John Lithgow are also present), they are mostly the playthings of the machinery (plot and otherwise) of the Nolans’ scenario.

This one’s worth seeing just for its exceptionally grand ambition, but unlike the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey or the recent Gravity, it’s not something that’ll have me hurrying back for repeat viewings.