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"Inception's" problems stem completely from the screenplay. While we're meant to believe that the world Nolan has created is of the utmost complexity, it is nowhere near the level that the exposition affords it. "Inception" is a monstrous, all-consuming exposition that seems to devour character and emotion to the point that, on the whole, the film feels like the origin story for a much more interesting tale. That is, the dream-espionage set-up is wonderfully original and clearly well-researched, but far too much time is spent establishing the rules of the world and far too little twisting those rules into anything other than face value.

Ellen Page's Ariadne is the most clear cut example; Leonardo DiCaprio's Cobb, needing to pull a dream heist, brings her in as an "architect," someone skilled at creating realistic dreams. She essentially plays the audience for exactly one scene, letting Cobb give us the setup and then she's gone. Not physically gone. She's still in the rest of the film, she just, almost instantly, becomes like the other members of the team, void of history and emotion and little more than an extra warm body. A viewer would be hard-pressed to name a single personality trait of any character in the entire film outside the shallowest plot elements. We're told, not shown, every bit of how the world of Inception works, as though Nolan is deeply concerned that we're not going to get it. For a film about imagination that seemingly wants to rest on its cerebral laurels, it doesn't offer much respect for the mind of the viewer.