Inception (2010)

So, I caught "Inception" tonight, deciding to spend my valuable entertainment dollar on this Christopher Nolan-directed blockbuster. First off, it's going to do very well -- the theater was packed, the most-packed I've seen any theater in recent memory. I honestly can't recall a more-packed theater, so people are into this movie.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I really, really wanted to like this movie, but IT WAS BORING. I was fucking bored. Where to begin (without throwing any spoilers into the mix?) Hmph. It's a lukewarm action movie -- I mean, I have a problem with the whole "It's all a dream" kind of narrative conceit to begin with. I like my fiction to be REAL, ironically enough. Don't wrap a fictional tale in a fucking dream, pretty please? But I went anyway, because I thought it might be compelling enough to sit through, anyway.

The build-up was deadly-dull, dishing out the exposition, a few very light brushstrokes on characterization, Leo DiCaprio gamely trying to act -- you know the look, the furrowed brow, the careworn look. The other actors, doing their thing, basically being his foils and sounding boards for Leo's character to react to.

This movie is actually two movies -- a caper movie (but Oooh, it's a DREAM caper), and a kind of ghost story involving another character (a subplot that runs through the thing and is stitched into the larger narrative as part of Leo's back story). And I found myself thinking that the subplot would've made a much better movie, although it wouldn't have been a blockbuster action movie -- the dream caper aspect was just interminable, went on and on, various effects tossed into the mix, as we follow the characters from A to B to C to D levels of worlds-within-worlds. Talk about living in a dreamworld!

But this layer cake plotting is thinly-drawn, since the action isn't TOO over-the-top, and the characterization is nearly nonexistent, so it's hard to care too much about what's going on. It's that bane of lukewarm filmmaking that afflicts some movies.

Oh, sure, Christopher Nolan spackles in the gravitas in his ponderous manner -- the almost-ceaseless soundtrack (which always bugs me, wears down my ear -- the nonstop wash of mood music that tells us Something Important Is Happening Here -- it was used a lot in "The Dark Knight" as well). And he runs the jumpycam action sequences to show that Something Important Is Happening Here. But it's all too telegraphed -- too much and too little.

The subplot around the character "Mal" (!!!) is ultimately the most interesting part of the movie, a kind of dream ghost rattling around in Leo's character's head, but she's given short shrift relative to the exigencies of the broader dream caper, which grinds on to its inexorable and tepid conclusion. But a movie written around Mal would've been far different than the "Inception" that was made -- it would've been better, too, but they clearly wanted to go for the sugar fix of the action movie with super special fx.

And the dream special effects are certainly dazzling on some level, but again, it's too much doing too little. Fucking boring. It was boring. I was bored. And it was too long. I'm being deliberately vague (again, avoiding spoilers, here), but there is a thick vein of "Who Gives a Fuck?" running right through the heart of this movie -- the catalyst for this caper is shadowy, the motivations of Leo's character are murky (I mean, we're TOLD why he's doing it, but it hardly fucking matters), the other characters are pasteboard, and even the dreams themselves are big piles of bullshit.

This is a mediocre movie that didn't move me, and yet it'll likely succeed admirably because people love dreamy special effects. Although "The Cell" was roundly panned, I think it did a much better job communicating the weirdness inside somebody's head than the rather linear portrayals of reality in these dreaming characters. Hell, watch the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, too, while you're at it. They're more satisfying and meaningful movies than this one, which was heavy on dross, but with little in the way of actual dramatic or narrative paydirt. And while the ending had the audience crying out, it felt more like another ruse and I again thought "Who Cares?"

I wanted to like this movie, but it was just boring. You'll see what I mean if you watch it.

** (out of five)