Okay, maybe this movie isn't awful. It's closer to mediocre, but I just can't resist the urge to lower its over-inflated rating.

To be fair, Inception has a strong cast, inventive CGI, and an interesting premise. Nonetheless, the film ends up being surprisingly tedious and unaffecting. Images rush across the screen as jargon-rich dialogue whisks pasts your ears. The film's methodical score swells and swells until you can barely make out what the characters are saying. It's all so complex, but complex like a brainteaser or a riddle. If you concentrate very hard, you can decode the film's narrative trick of dreams within dreams within dreams within, well you get the idea, and multiple action sequences all taking place at once in parallel dreamscapes.

But, what do you get for all of your narrative attention? Very little. The story is gimmicky and the characters are flat: you just don't care what happens to them. In fact, when watching this film, I did not feel as if I were watching characters navigate a story world. Instead, I felt like I was watching movie stars speak difficult dialogue while performing stunts.

By the way, any movie that can make Joseph Gordon-Levitt seem less than fascinating must have something wrong with it. If you do not believe me, then watch Manic, Mysterious Skin, or The Lookout. Then marvel at Inception's ability to mask— or at the very least waste— his considerable talent.

As for the movie's imagery, it is initially striking. Then, like the movie's narrative trope— a dream within a dream within a dream— it becomes simply repetitious. Whose dreams look so leaden and dull? And whose dreams are so relentlessly consistent and coherent? There are so many good movies that replicate the bizarre visual logic of dreams-- Vertigo, Badlands, The Last Wave, Videodrome, Blue Velvet, Until the End of the World. Has director Christopher Nolan ever seen any of these movies? Has he ever even had a dream?

In short, Inception delivers some new cinematic tricks, but lacks emotional depth or provocative imagery. It's a notch above Hollywood's typical comic book based summer extravaganza, but only a notch.