Incestuous Dreams Ad Nauseam: "Inception" is Ridiculously Overrated

What an evening, trying to get through a bad bad cinema dream called Inception ... Struggling not to hit the pause button, then the eject drawer, then go surfing for junk TV relief.

I am ASTONISHED over this film having suckered so many critics into embracing it. Who could possibly be enthralled by such a pretentiously obtuse script other than maybe a brain scientist specializing in the overactive subconscious during sleep; a critic fearing being seen as out of trendy touch; or anybody who believes that any flick in which the once-compelling Leonardo DiCaprio appears just must be, has got to be great.

Item: The King's Speech, and my favorite, The Social Network, are tremendously realized works that make utter plain brilliant sense, and has anybody a problem with that?

Item: But then again, I harbor no illusions about dreams having a reality of their own.

Item: To my reassuring delight, wondering if I had reached a new low in move-going under comprehension, I looked up the reviews and the following lights also were left dumbfounded and put off: New Yorker, Chicago Reader, Village Voice, New York Magazine, and the ever delightful Rex Reid, calling this vain celluloid puzzle "drivel." Thank you, T. Rex.

So there, I just had to get this out.

DiCaprio was a marvel in his youth playing poets and painters. In recent years, mostly he has fallen prey to mediocre roles in mediocre films. The one sterling exception: His superlative performance in Revolutionary Road. Therein, we did not see Leonardo; we saw and believed in the character he was evenhandedly playing.

Inception goes totally off course when it resorts to all sorts of hokey James Bond-like shoot 'em up scenes, evidently inserted for those suffering from Inception-induced fatigue. Does anybody really care what this mess might be about?

Final kicker! Guy at my local video store up Piedmont Avenue said, what many straining defenders are saying, "You you have to watch the film at least two or more times to understand it." And then? Said the same guy, "The second time I watched it, I became even more confused."

Whoever worked early PR on this Hollywood clinker deserves the P.T. Barnum Humbug of The Year Award.