Interstellar Schminsterstellar

Oh Matthew! Oh you sexy, devious bastard. People in Hollywood think they’re going to put you smack in the middle of a movie poster and draw crowds by the millions. They’re right. It works. I saw the poster for ‘Insterstellar’ and I drooled I tell you. Drooled! I dreamt of you that night. You and that wicked accent of yours. You told me to watch the movie. You wore the astronaut space suit thingy and in that mellow, honey covered drawl of yours promised me the ride of a lifetime. I awoke. I told the husband to get his act together. I told him we are going to watch this blockbusting Oscar winner come hail or high water. Egged on by a darling of a dear friend, we booked the tickets. I went nuts. He said the movie was so good he cried. I was convinced that THIS….was IT. He said the movie reminded him of the love he felt for the wife he doesn’t have and his unborn child. I giggled gleefully and bounced like a little child on the soles of my feet.

Then….we watched the movie.

That idiot of a friend, the one who said that this movie was the next best thing since sliced bread? Yeah him. I now dream of killing him. Bringing him back to life. Then killing him again. This movie is…it is…well, it’s hard to find a word to describe it. First off, it’s almost like the movie has been shot in Gurgaon. There is copious amounts of dust. EVERYWHERE. People set the table, turn around to collect the food and when they turn back there is a mini-dune right there. On the effing table! There’s dust in their lungs and by the looks of it, inside the brains of pretty much everyone who was involved in making this film. Pfft I say. We see this nonsense all the time here and we don’t feel the need to send space ships into holes of worms to look for a new planet. Immunity fo shiz! Any the hoo. The Americans decide they have to save the human race. Without taking help from anyone else on the entire friggin’ planet. That’s alright. I’ve seen so many of these movies that I’d have been surprised if they had decided otherwise.

So there’s this engineer-cum-reluctant farmer-cum-doting father of daughter-cum-ghar jamai-cum-supreme rocket/space ship driver/pilot of the world. Or something. All I see is this stud muffin and I hear his dialogues and I am deeply disappointed. Spoiler alert! Matthew McConaughey has tucked away those neat little pronunciations of his and opted to go in for a regular (yawn!) vocabulary for this movie. He discovers NASA’s latest hidey hole through nformation passed on by real shady behaviour by some dust in his house and heads there while making some real sensible decisions along the way. Like allowing his very underage daughter, who has sneaked into the truck, to accompany him to a mysterious destination. Not important to this review, but the daughter is the computer graphic child of Edward and Bella Cullen. Turns out she’s a real person. Surreal I tell you! All said, he’s hired, mostly for lack of other options and the non-existent sex appeal of Anne Hathaway in very short hair. After much please-don’t-go and daddy-come-back, he gets into this aircraft and takes off. It is to be noted that the team is accompanied by two multipurpose robots who have more sass than I’d be willing to take from a machine when I’m flying halfway to God alone knows where. Although I’d forgive them in due course when I’d realize how important they really are.

They travel light years via a wormhole put by ‘Them’. Viewers and stud muffin ask the same question together, ‘Who are They?’ The question is unanswered despite all of us asking it several times. Just when everyone is convinced that ‘They’ are aliens, it is somehow proven that ‘They’…wait for it…are US! From a parallel time line. They go and visit new planets, realise people are dead and end up killing some more. The nerd and the token black guy are the first to go. So much for being innovative. They then get totally trolled by Matt Damon who frankly shouldn’t have done the movie. Of course, I feel that the Anne Hathaway being in love with him (in the movie) might have been a plus. Quite a waste since he didn’t even get a kiss from her and ended up being quite the scumbag. Lots of technological crap later, everyone decides to up and go home which they try to do in the most kick ass looking way possible. Which means only Rajnikanth could have done it and that too with one hand tied behind his back. They jump headfirst into a black hole which is supposed to take the chick straight back to earth and doesn’t. She ends up in some galaxy far, far away. It is also supposed to take the man (secretly) to some galaxy far, far away and ends up taking him into some fourth dimension made out of colourful strings. He can observe the goings on in his daughter’s life in a parallel timeline. Begins interacting with her in some very poltergeist way. Tossing books, shaking walls, making watches tick in morse code, which is noticed way too late in the movie. By the way, this is where he figures out that ‘They’ are us. Soon enough, the director gets sick of the drama, destroys the whole thing and the force tosses him bang in the middle of one of Saturn’s rings where he is picked up by a floating space station, named after his daughter who has become an awesome scientist. Just like you could be picked by a friend from your place or from the market or something. Tossed about like a rag doll by a black hole in a different galaxy, not a single bruise to show for it, ends up floating like a piece of debris around one of the planets in his own solar system and gets picked up along the way. I swear, he has some serious good karma piled up to have this kind of dumb luck.

So here is this curly haired cutie all safe and warm on the space station. He goes to visit his dying daughter who has aged substantially thanks to relativity. For those who don’t know, on this mega mission, every hour in the other galaxy is equivalent to seven years on earth. So where the daughter is a dying lump of high IQ, the father is still all abs and dimples. Sigh! He goes to her deathbed, holds her hand and sobs his heart out. She tells him, ‘Go away! I’m with my own family now and you’re giving me the creeps.’ Of course, she sugar coats it. Asks him to join Anne on the random galaxy she got thrown into. Still young. Still rosie lipped and doe eyed. He says ‘kthxbye’ and takes off. Literally, takes off. Leaving behind the one person he had been pining for throughout the movie for a person who he doesn’t even give a rat’s arse about! Then the movie ends. Really.

Now you know. If you watch this movie, do remember Murphy’s Law ‘What will be will be’. It doesn’t have anything to do with the movie even though it’s scattered all over it liberally. I mean if what will be will be then why the hell did you go somewhere to fix what will be? I don’t know man! All I want to say is, like the friend, have a heavy shot of cognac and watch the movie. Maybe you’d like it then.