I fell victim to the hype of Stranger Things (Duffer Brothers) which isn’t so much of an homage to the 1980s as a compilation of derivatives. 
Truth be known it is nothing more than bits of E.T. (Misfit kids on bikes) glued to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Crazy parent who knows the truth), Poltergeist (Portal to monster world) and Minority Report (Innocent conduit in water). 
To say nothing of Little Shop of Horrors (Man-eating plant-faced monster) and Under the Skin (Pitch black other-world). 
The worse of all though would have to be setting it in Hawking, Indiana, a tip of the hat to the father of alternate universes? Can the eggs get any more rotten than this? (No.)
Tag Archives: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Chris Nolan’s “Interstellar” Rip-Off
Interstellar is but a messy compilation of almost every science fiction film done before.
It opens as Shyamalan’s Signs – a paranormal tone established on a farm – and develops into Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind – the lead character following intuitive clues to a secret government installation.
Our cast goes off in search of other worlds – like all other star-bound yarns – and toils through predictable and half-developed space-age themes like isolation, claustrophobia and love in close quarters, with a couple of buddy-robots thrown in for laughs. 
The worst of the plagiarism is the sophomoric rip-off from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 
Nolan makes repeated attempts at reaching a Kubrick-ian plateau by diving through worm holes, black holes and inner space, eventually arriving at a fifth dimension where time becomes a soft-focus library, from which the viewer can only beg to be released.
The only way this film could be made more tedious would be to view it on Dr. Miller’s Water Planet (pictured below) where an hour equals seven earth-bound years. 
That’s right, 21 straight years of Matthew McConaughey tearing up because he can’t age fast enough.
Instead of Interstellar, I recommend a 1996 episode of The Outer Limits, Worlds Apart. 
As cheap as the special effects may be, the story is the same and it’s free on-line.