Movie review: Inception

Warning:  I may ruin this movie for you in more ways than one.
 

So, I've had Inception sitting next to my TV for the last two weeks.

And this afternoon, when I had reading, homework and many other things I should have been doing, I decided to sit down and give it a shot.

First of all, let me say this:

IT'S LONG.

Maybe 2 1/2 hours doesn't seem that bad to some of you, but I have a small bladder.  Plus, I might've been a little sleepy.

Or maybe this movie was 2 1/2 HOURS!

Here's the basic premise.  Leonardo DiCaprio sneaks into other people's dreams to steal their secrets for whichever faceless corporation is paying him, while being voluntarily emotionally haunted by his sort of dead wife (played by Marion Cotillard).  Sure, why not?

Then, Ken Watanabe (bad ass ninja) shows up and wants Leonardo to do a job for him (sounds dirty, but it's not), and in exchange, will fix all of Leo's unpaid parking tickets and get him unlimited texting for a year.  This is, of course, an offer Leo can't refuse.

Leo assembles his team of Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ellen Paige and some other people whose names I don't know off the top of my head and quite frankly, I'm too lazy to look them up.  Team Dream Squirrels comes up with a fullproof, genius plan to hack into some fancy corporate dude's head and plant an idea all up in his cookie, so that when he woke up, he'd say to his butler, "From now on, I eat polenta for breakfast.  Now, hand me my brown pants!"

So, the Dream Squirrels go to implement their plan and everything is going swimmingly until Leo's dead wife starts playing with trains and a bunch of ninjas shoot Ken Watanabe, which was pretty upsetting.

TWIST!  The plan is flawed!

Oddly enough, I was totally with it up to this point.  But now that the plan is slowly falling to pieces, the Squirrels start getting antsy, people start mixing their metaphors and Leo decides to spill his guts to Ellen about the magical dream land he and his deadish wife created until he made her crazy and she killed herself a little.

Now, this movie would've saved itself had an animated, dancing crab come on to the screen and sung a duet with Donny Osmond.  Sadly, that didn't happen.

Several times, while Leo and Jospeh discussed proper dream etiquette, I found myself thinking, "Oh now, you're just making that up."

The movie went on for another hour and a half while some things happened, stuff blew up, some more people died but not really and I think Marion Cotillard had her eyeballs surgically enhanced for maximum itch. 

The super suspenseful part before the end is when both Leo and Mayor Watanabe are both stuck in Dream Limbo (See?  Doesn't that sound made up?).  They have dinner, discuss open-toed shoes and Apartheid, and then decide to return to their original reality.

The mission is a success, Leo's parking tickets are paid and Michael Caine takes him to see his kids.

Or am I...?


All in all, I really didn't mind this movie so much.  I got annoyed with the rather purposeful intent of trying to make this appear super complicated, so if you didn't like it, people could say, "Oh, you probably just didn't get it," and leave it at that.

No no, I got it.  I just think it would've been better if they'd added a dancing crab.