After waiting not-so-patiently for this film to FINALLY open in the states, I was psyched to get to finally see it. I’m a sci-fi nerd, and proud of it. I knew this movie was designed to contain more of the science side of that name than most material of the genre. And ultimately that sentiment is true, up to a point. When it comes right down to it, this movie could have been my favorite movie of the year - right up until the final act of the film. That’s where it all completely falls apart. Everything they had tried to achieve up to that point unravels, in a massive way. Movies like this are particularly frustrating. Still, I’ll rank it pretty high despite the screwed up final act, just because the stuff preceding it is so darned great.

Writing: Like I said, this is the single problematic aspect of the film. For the first 3/4 of the running time, it is absolutely fantastic. Then all the sudden, it becomes a different movie. One that sucks. I don’t know what happened. More specifically, I have no idea what caused them to pretty much abandon what they had been trying to achieve up to that point to turn it into a movie that it’s not. If they had rewritten the final act to keep it grounded in reality, they would have had a flat-out fantastic film.

Production: Absolutely nothing to complain about here. The production of the film, from every department, is stunning. The visual effects work is absolutely gorgeous. Massive amounts of praise to the folks that pulled that off. The cinematography is beautiful and very striking. Sound design is rich, vibrant and subtle. Production and set design are spot-on. The production is fantastic even when the script completely falls apart at the end. I particularly love the way the vfx team shot the “beauty passes” of the spacecraft in different ways during the first act of the film, giving it all sorts of different moods and energy.

Cast: Here’s another excellent aspect of the film. Cillian Murphy comes through yet again in a Danny Boyle movie. Chris Evans is excellent in his no-nonsense role. Rose Byrne turns in a nice, subtle performance. The rest of the supporting cast does a fine job.

Music: Danny Boyle’s composer of choice lately is John Murphy, who along with industrial music duo Underworld comes through with a nice score. It’s a little bit reminiscent of something that composer Clint Mansell might do with the material. Overall, it works.

I admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, yet even still I was fairly disappointed with it. I neither particularly like nor dislike Adam Sandler or his movies as a rule. I think a few of the films are great. He does his best work when Drew Barrymore is his co-star. 50 First Dates is easily his best film. The Wedding Singer is quite good as well. The other one that I like a lot, one without Barrymore, is Happy Gilmore. The rest are either completely average (Mr. Deeds, etc) or complete misfires (The Waterboy, Big Daddy, etc). Well, this one is to be filed under the misfires. While I didn’t dislike it quite as much as The Waterboy, it’s still pretty lame.

Writing: How in the world this script has the pedigree of talents like Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor is beyond me. It’s a mix of obvious gay jokes, one after another, and incredibly lame soapboxed political correctness. Despite a few witty moments, it all falls miserably flat or embarrassingly awkward. I sat there dreading the ending that was obviously coming, and sure enough by the end I was presented with just such an ending. Some scripts can get away with that if they play into it well enough and round out their characters by the time they get there. This film doesn’t pull that off. When it wants to be politically correct, it takes the usual Hollywood approach of making everyone on the side of its argument nice and likable and the opposing side complete whack job zealots (in this case, religious groups in general). It takes the writing talents of a kindergartener to crank this stuff out.

Production: Nothing to say here, really. Everything about this production is as incredibly average for the genre as could possibly be.

Cast: For the most part, this is the only strength of the film. Adam Sandler is amiable enough, though not particularly convincing as a womanizer, and Kevin James fits his role well enough. Highlight supporting performances to Dan Aykroyd and Ving Rhames, both of whom manage to make something of their 100% stereotyped roles. Other supporting roles are complete and total failures, surprisingly from the likes of Steve Buscemi. Rob Schneider is awful, but to whom does this come as a huge surprise? I have no idea why Sandler continues to drag Schneider’s dead weight on screen from movie to movie.

Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams comes through with a staggeringly average, stereotyped score. For a movie that is supposedly about the problems of stereotypes, almost everything about the movie could be adequately described by the term.