Early Reviews Suggest 'Interstellar' May Disappoint At The Oscars

Director Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" - starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway on a space mission to save the future of the human race - is one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year.

The film doesn't hit theaters until November 7th, but the handful of lucky fans and entertainment insiders who saw the movie during a few private screenings last week all raved about it:

Even directors like Brad Bird only had praise for the project:

But the minute critics finally saw the film earlier this week, the rave reviews came to a halt. It turns out "Interstellar" may not be the Oscar sweeping movie everyone thought it was going to be.

"'Interstellar' Lifts Off, But There's Still No Oscar Frontrunner," The Wrap writer Steve Pond titled his recent review of the flick.

Pond explains: "'Interstellar' is a big, extravagant film that will clean up when it comes to below-the-line nominations, and a touching movie that could figure into the Oscar acting races. But it isn't the one thing that this year's race has been missing: a frontrunner."

In Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson's review "'Interstellar' Gets Lost In Space," he writes that "Christopher Nolan's ambitious outer-space adventure is more admirable for its intentions than for its overall execution."

The Guardian's Henry Barnes agrees, saying: "Christopher Nolan's post-Batman epic gens up on the physics, gets down with the grandeur, rattles down a wormhole and gets lost in space."

In his review, Barnes writes of the film: "It wants to awe us into submission, to concede our insignificance in the face of such grand-scale art. It achieves that with ease. Yet on his way to making an epic, Nolan forgot to let us have fun."

"Interstellar" currently has just a 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is fairly low compared to Nolan's past films like 2010's "Inception" (86%), or 2008's "The Dark Knight" (94%).

Looks like "Interstellar" star Matthew McConaughey, who won last year's Best Actor Oscar for "Dallas Buyer's Club," may not be bringing home that statue two years in a row.

But the negative reviews aren't hurting box office projections.

"Interstellar" is slated to rake in an estimated $76 million opening weekend, per BoxOffice.com, which also projects the film will earn $340 million total domestically.

Despite the negative reviews, there are still a few positive posts out there, like Variety's, which says, "Christopher Nolan hopscotches across space and time in a visionary sci-fi trip that stirs the head and the heart in equal measure."