To use a sport analogy, Interstellar is Manchester City: it's hired all the best people without first considering where they'll all fit in. Take, for example, the likes of Casey Affleck, David Oyelowo and Topher Grace, who are essentially Interstellar's super subs given a few minutes of work when they're capable of so much more. Affleck, an Oscar nominee and one of the best American actors currently working, plays Murphy's also-ran brother Tom. And Oyelowo, likely to soon be an Oscar nominee for his portrayal of Martin Luther King in this year's Selma, puts in an appearance as a school principal so peripheral that unknown Collette Wolfe - playing a schoolteacher - does much of the talking in his scene. Of course, that Dr Mann is actually played by Matt Damon is one of the film's biggest reveals, and the emotionally wrecked, duplicitous Mann should provide Damon with one of the film's most complex characters. Alas, Damon finds himself with very little screen time, and his appearance, like Affleck's, Oyelowo's and Grace's, is distracting more than anything. Without question, these actors will have jumped at the chance to work with someone as prominent as Christopher Nolan; you'd have expected more to have been made of them.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
