10 Smart Movies Which Are Secretly Dumb

When Christopher Nolan's Inception was first released, critics tripped over themselves to praise it as one of the smartest Hollywood blockbusters of all time.

But it's perhaps more accurate to say that Inception is one of the most creative blockbusters ever - a film overflowing with inspired ideas which add up to a highly entertaining, visually mesmerising whole.

Yet as much as Nolan is clearly a great ideas man, his biggest weakness as a jack-of-all-trades filmmaker is his tin-ear for dialogue.

Outside of Memento, all of Nolan's major successes up to this point were co-written with somebody else, and Inception marked the first blockbuster film he decided to write solo.

And boy, it sure shows.

Inception is a film so afraid to ever leave the Average Joe unsure of what's going on that the entire movie - and especially the first act - is constantly awash in hand-holding expository dialogue.

Nolan transparently uses the character of Ariadne (Elliot Page) as an audience arrogate, her curiosity about dream-sharing allowing Nolan to semi-plausibly dump reams of exposition in the audience's lap.

It's often said that Inception is a movie that makes the audience feel smart for getting it, and that might be its true success, in casting such an intoxicating spell as to convince people it's a high-functioning rendition of a genuinely brilliant idea - rather than one pandering to the lowest common denominator.