When I first left the theater, I loved Interstellar. It was action packed, star-studded and kept me on the edge of my seat for most of the two hours and 49 minutes. The graphics were incredible and reminiscent of director Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, although Christopher Nolan prided himself on the lack of green screens used in the making of Interstellar. The pacing and flow of the movie wasn’t excellent — it was too fast at some points and dragged on too long in others — and was sub par compared to Nolan’s other movies like Inception, but there was still enough drama to keep me entertained for the whole time.

Nolan did a great job creating a world that blended apocalypse, science fiction and mystery, where dust storms threatened towns and crops were failing. We are dropped into a future Earth where the only hope of survival is to leave and find a new home planet.

NASA pilot turned farmer, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), and his daughter “Murph” stumble across an underground facility with help from Murph’s mysterious “ghost” and end up discovering Earth’s best kept secret: the new NASA headquarters/secret rocket launch site.

Predictably, Cooper is the only one qualified enough to fly this new space ship, and with the help of fellow astronauts Brand, Doyle and Romilly he travels through a conveniently placed wormhole in search of a new planet to call home.

It wasn’t until I had left the theater and had time to digest that I began to see the major flaws of the movie. The film just attempted to cover too much in the time it had: profound themes of love and the mystery of the universe, along with a plot line that covered 80 years. Nolan tried to emphasize the physics of the movie, from wormholes to general relativity, but in an overly simplistic way in an attempt to convince the whole audience that is is plausible to pilot a spaceship through a wormhole.

Interstellar also pushed the idea that love is the one thing that transcends time and space. Throughout the movie, Cooper struggles with the realization that he may never see his children again, and Murph, believing her father abandoned her on Earth, fights to continue his work and save her planet.

If you are willing to suspend your disbelief for three hours, Interstellar is a great movie. The graphics are excellent, the plot is engaging and the major themes, while pushy, are effective in keeping you invested in the characters.