Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is a terrible film and ranks right beside Terence Mullick's equally awful Tree of Life. Having been a general admirer of both these directors, the terrible lemons they've let rip are particularly sour for me. 

Interstellar is mostly the story of Nolan chasing false Gods (Auteurism, Kubrick and in particular his  Space Odyssey) and coming up woefully short. It's a good theme I guess but a poor plot, shallow character buildup and questionable style choices have lead to a messy, incomprehensible, cacophony.  

In a near-distant future, the earth has become largely uninhabitable. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), an ex pilot living with his family is trying to make sense of the desperate times. He shares a special bond with his daughter (eventually Jessica Chasten) who is troubled by a "ghost" in her room. They happen to stumble upon a group of NASA scientists, led by Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) who are trying to find a new home for humans and how to get there. Cooper must leave behind his family to find a habitable distant planet.  On his interstellar voyage he gets into complications that eventually force him to make some unusual decisions.

Interstellar never really makes sense. I mean that not from a scientific perspective but an an entertainment one. There is nothing holding this film together. For all the talk of gravity, the film seems to lack that the most. Stuff is simply thrown at you and most just doesn't stick. 

• The first 40-minutes of the film is mostly people driving bad trucks in rural American farmlands. You'd be entirely forgiven for feeling like you are sitting in Shyamalan's last good film - Signs.
• McConaughey needs a speech therapist. Speaking serious, completely  indecipherable words cannot be the sole path to Oscar glory. 
• There are giant plumes of dust. Not sure why. The dust seems to play a big role for the first 40 minutes but then it just is forgotten. 
• There is a drone that is chased through a corn field. An Indian surveillance drone, no less. And then Cooper uses a Dell laptop to land the drone safely. It is a very emotional scene in a "how to tame your drone" kind of way.
• Only corn has survived whatever flavor of natural catastrophe that has befallen the earth. The soda companies must be rejoicing. And if only corn survives then at least America would be fine. Who would even know? Isn't everything already corn?
• Now about the "ghost" - It doesn't take rocket science to figure out who it is. Nolan's big reveal - if he was going for one is terribly weak. 
• So the "ghost" wants Cooper to stay back but yet the ghost gives the coordinates of NASA to Cooper? Should he stay or should he go?
• There is John Lithgow who is wasted in an almost completely useless role as Cooper's father-in-law casted almost entirely for one semi-sharp rejoinder. So is Casey Affleck, as Copper's tortured son whose kids keep dying. However, why he doesn't want to move isn't exactly clear. Or why he is so pissed off. Just another unnecessary subplot. 
• There is a ridiculously shaped computer called TARS with a tiring sense of humor, seemingly Nolan's version of the awful Jar Jar Binks. 
• Speaking of which, there aren't too many non-whites in this version of America's future. Once again, we must rely on "the white man's burden" to save the earth. 
• And what's with all the crying? Copious amounts of crying. Long shots of lead characters crying. Must we be subjected to long shots of tears when important parts of the story as mumbled or glossed over?
• Oh and the music! One of the most annoying things is Hans Zimmer's music. Loud, piercing music plays through most of the film even when people are talking. It is used like a hammer to dull our senses. It crowds out the dialogue, which is hard to follow in the first place. I cannot imagine a film where the music got more in the way. For a film that Nolan self-describes as "Experiential" (whatever the heck that means) - you cannot really experience because your eardrums are being scraped off every bit by louder bit. 

In all fairness, Nolan has always pushed the boundaries of what an entertaining story should be. He has made at least two excellent films messing with our sense of time. In Memento, we lost the sense of time as the protagonist could not make long-term memories. In Inception, the time slowed down and allowed for fascinating worlds to be created. In Interstellar, Nolan wants to explore the impact of varying time speeds and what it could mean to us. The premise is promising as always but this time the delivery is just too haphazard and fails to qualify as a good, cohesive narrative.