ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Interstellar.
TORONTO — Set in the near future, when Earth is about to cease to exist, a group of astronauts are sent on a dangerous mission to search the galaxy for another habitable planet in the space drama Interstellar.
Directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception), it stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Wes Bentley.
Large parts of the movie were filmed in Alberta — including Calgary, Canmore, Okotoks, Nanton, Fort Macleod and Lethbridge.
Interstellar is expected to do well at the box office — but what are the critics saying about it? Here’s a look at a few reviews.
Justin Craig of Fox News said Interstellar “is almost a masterpiece. Almost.”
Craig singled out Hathway for the movie’s difficulty in making an emotional connection.
“Nolan writes her character Brand as an independent and strong scientist, which Hathaway does well – that is if independent, strong scientists are always and completely stoic,” he wrote.
“But when Brand – suddenly and without reason – drops all her science and logic to ’emotionally’ suggest a search mission for her long-lost love, thus putting their current mission in jeopardy, Hathaway begins to fail in the emotion department.”
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Craig opined Interstellar falls short of being “a contemporary science fiction masterpiece” but described it as “an often superb and marvelous movie-going experience.”
READ MORE: What the critics are saying about more recent movies
At the New York Daily News, Joe Neumaier called Interstellar a “thoughtful but ultimately unfulfilling” film.
He wrote: “Last year’s Gravity did a lot of what Interstellar aims to do, and in half the time.
“For all its faults, you may still want to go along for the ride. There are far worse fates.”
Vulture critic David Edelstein called the movie a “florid sci-fi opera” that is “hugely entertaining.”
He took issue with the running time, though.
“By the end of the three-hour Interstellar, you might wonder if 21 years has passed in the outside world too. But the first half at least goes by quickly. The second half is where the sputtering begins.
“But the movie is still gobs of fun if you’re in the right frame of mind.”
At the Star-Ledger in New Jersey, Stephen Whitty, opined Interstellar is “a science-fiction epic” that “takes a while to get started.”
He wrote: “It’s a drama about a father’s love. It’s a huge piece of special-effects eye-candy. It’s a trippy mindbender. It’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — with a heart.”
Oliver Franklin of Wired said Interstellar is Nolan’s most ambitious film to date.
“Interstellar is a film that simultaneously venerates science, yet asks you to suspend your disbelief,” wrote Franklin. “The result is a film of dazzling, galactic ambition, that is ultimately undone by earthbound problems.”
He called the script “clunky and disjointed” with dialogue that is occasionally “cringe-inducing.”
Franklin concluded: “For all its real failings, Interstellar is not far off being a masterpiece. Instead, in shooting for the Moon, it finds its place amongst the stars.”
Henry Barnes of The Guardian was more direct.
“Interstellar, a near three-hour whopper of a picture, powers through its plot holes and barrels through the corn,” he wrote. “It’s a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour.
“It wants to awe us into submission, to concede our insignificance in the face of such grand-scale art. It achieves that with ease. Yet on his way to making an epic, Nolan forgot to let us have fun.”
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