Do yourself a favor this summer blockbuster season, and see Inception.

We saw it last night at Atlantic Station.  My overall impression of it is that it’s got a few script irregularities, but if you’re willing to lose yourself in it, it is a beautiful, rich, imaginative film.

(Spoilers ahead… reader beware):I do have to say that while overall I liked the movie, it did have its issues. I suppose I should tell you all that the theater we were at had a few, um, technical difficulties during the show that extended our stay from about three hours (including wait time) to four and a half.

About an hour into the film there was a pop, and then the picture was upside down and backwards. We sat there for a good five minutes and didn’t say anything because honestly? Up until that point, the movie was weird and choppy enough that it did sort of make sense…

After five minutes though, people began to get up to go complain. More people left, everyone started talking, and then the lights came up. “Sorry, everyone,” a representative of the theater shouted at us, “but the reel is backwards. We’re just going to take 10 minutes and correct it and then resume the film.”

So, we took a break, and then forty-five minutes later the lights dimmed and we resumed the movie from where it had left off.

I’m not sure if my opinion was altered by how the movie was broken up, or if it truly was this way, but to me the first half was hard to follow and the second half was absolutely riveting.

I don’t know. Was it the pacing? Maybe. Sometimes there were points of the plot where you just went…what? What’s that/why did that happen/why are they doing this? A bit of background about why people are hijacking dreams now would have been nice. Other times, things flowed smoothly, while finally, and perhaps on purpose, you just didn’t know if this was reality or a dream.

However, this was also one of the reasons I thought this movie was occasionally brilliant; it tiptoed the line between pissing off the viewers and pulling off something wonderful and toyed with the idea of everything being a dream.  As a fiction writer, one of the big no-nos of storytelling is that you should never make the plot of a book all a dream. Why? Because the reader feels cheated. All of their time spent reading was for nothing, and nothing can be learned from the events that have transpired because it was all just in the person’s head.

There are few movies that pull this off very well at all (A Beautiful Mind does it fairly well). The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Stay, a movie starring (one of my favorites) Ryan Gosling, Ewan McGregor, and Naomi Watts, and that relies on this it’s-all-a-dream plot… and sadly… is not very good. That’s not to say that I didn’t like it. Just overall…eh.  Anyway,  Inception did a great job of handling this, playing with this notion and making us question ourselves just enough. I liked that.

The acting was fine, I think. Leonardo DiCaprio always delivers, although to be honest I feel like his performances are leveling out. To me he seems the same as he did in Blood Diamond, Shutter Island, and now this movie (haven’t yet gotten around to watching the newest one with Kate Winslet).. But he’s solid and dependable as an actor and you can always expect a great performance from him.  I’d really like to see him in another role though, to be honest…

Joseph Gordon-Levitt to me stole the show for a lot of the movie. During the latter half, his character is left on the second level of the dream world to for a while, and these were some of the more fascinating parts of the entire film.  I don’t think I’ve seen JGL in a role like this before (minus G.I. Joe), so this was refreshing.

The rest of the cast, including Michael Caine’s brief appearances, were great as well. Overall, the movie was very well-acted. The CG was fantastic, of course (the zero-gravity fight scenes were the best), and the worlds of the dreams themselves were interesting and incredibly rendered.

I liked it. I liked it a lot. I’m a bit disappointed with Hans Zimmer’s score, though. While it was appropriate, it sort of faded to the background and I didn’t pick up any memorable themes for the movie. What will stick with me is the trailer music, which was more new and fresh than Zimmer’s score.

Or maybe I just didn’t get a chance for a lot of things to hit me. It all went by so fast.

Oh, I’m definitely watching it again. Hopefully in IMAX, when I get some time to myself.  But yes… do yourself a favor and go see this. You won’t regret it.

Categories : adventures, movies