INCEPTION–I saw it today with three teenagers and we had a lot of plot analysis to get through. It didn’t help that I dozed off for a bit during the first third of the movie. This thing hangs on the details, and they overwhelmed me and I lost consciousness.

But I do remember the first scene–Leonardo DiCaprio washed up on some archetypal shore(did he survive the sinking of the Titanic after all?) fresh from SHUTTER ISLAND and once again exploring what’s real and what isn’t. He and his team(Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are “dream extracters.” Ouch. My psyche is killing me. They are on a mission to infiltrate a particular target’s(Cillian Murphy) dreams and gain access to his subconscious, and even his sub-sub conscious so as to plant the seed of an idea there, in other words “Inception.” Uh oh. Playing God is never as easy as it sounds.

The movie then becomes an elaborate psychodrama/adventure with some way cool effects. The team plays cops and robbers, racing against time and from level to level within the target’s psyche like it’s some big metaphysical multi-storied apartment complex/ complexes they’re sub-consciously sub-letting! There are gun battles and fist fights, and shape shifters, and time warps, as they fend off projections, hidden desires, and emotional defenses, with Leo simultaneously fighting off a guilt complex and Marion Cotillard– who keeps singing in French. Are you with me?

As I admitted, I wasn’t with me some of the time, but oddly enough, even after my brief snooze, the labyrinthine plot and all of the rules of the world it posits actually held up. The film does take itself pretty seriously. A little bit of Jung and Freud go a long way; I kept flashing on what Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock have done with such material. In any case, ply yourself with coffee and try to stay awake. Or not. I had fun anyway!

Sweet dreams…