For some reason, movies and TV shows are determined to convince us that once we have children, our lives will never be the same. While this is true in many respects, having kids is like anything else in life -- it is what you make of it. When my wife and I had our first child, our routine really didn't change all that much. We still saw friends, we still went shopping, we still went to dinner. The one thing that did change was that we quit going to the movies (we used to go at least once a week). Thank God for Blu-rays and DVD! These days, when we do go to the theater, it's usually to catch the latest animated film, but occasionally a movie will come along which looks so promising that we hire a babysitter and head for the multiplex. Inception certainly looked like that kind of movie and we couldn't wait to see it. Afterwards, we couldn't believe that we'd wasted "Mommy-Daddy" time on that movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Inception as Dom Cobb, a thief with a very unique talent. He and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), have perfected the technique of invading and manipulating the dreams of others in order to steal private information. Despite the fact that an attempt to take secrets from Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe), the businessman is so impressed that he hires Dom. However, he doesn't want an idea stolen from someone, he wants an idea implanted in their brain -- a process known as inception. Although Arthur feels that inception is impossible, Dom takes the job, as Mr. Saito has promised him something very special if he can deliver. Dom contacts Eames (Tom Hardy), an old accomplice, to be part of the team, and he finds Ariadne (Ellen Page) to be the "architect", the one who builds the dreams. He also recruits Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who has created a potent sedative. With his team in place, Dom is ready to slip into the subconscious of the target. However, Dom is harboring a dark secret from his past which could jeopardize the mission.

These issues aside, any movie which deals with dreams has the potential to be creative and do some interesting things...but not this movie. This may be the first movie about dreams which doesn't really exploit the power of dreams. I know what you're saying, "You're crazy Mike, there was that whole thing with the train and the folding of the city." Yeh, that was interesting and all, but why couldn't the team, other than Eames, do anything special in the dreams? Eames could change his appearance and make weapons appear and the others...could just run around. That is lame. The whole point of going into a dream is to do cool things. Who makes a movie about dreams and then goes out of their way to make it seem as realistic as possible?

Finally, we have the pacing of the film. Seeing it at home, where I could monitor the running time, I couldn't believe that the dream mission takes up the last hour of the film. When seeing Inception in the theater, I knew that it went on for a while, but not an hour. This section is packed with action, but it gets very repetitive and drags. The battle in the snow fortress simply goes on and on and feels more like a James Bond movie than a semi-sci-fi film. And the van. Oh my God, that van just kept falling and falling and I'm convinced that somewhere, it's still falling.

Inception had such potential, but it was squandered. Much has been made of the convoluted nature of the film (if you haven't seen the episode of South Park which lampoons this, you need to), but even the basic premise can seem muddled if one isn't paying attention. The "shared dream" experience is never really explained and the movie assumes that we are just going to run with it. The movie does contain some great visuals, such as the zero gravity segment, but they don't have an original story to back them up. There's nothing worse than being disappointed in a movie, especially when one has used one of their rare visits to the theater.

Inception really seems to hate produce stands on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains a VC-1 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 25 Mbps. The image is incredibly sharp and clear, showing no grain or defects from the source material. The colors look good and the image is never overly dark or bright. The image's crispness has granted it very good depth and a nice amount of detail. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.5 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. The subwoofer effects are excellent, as they provide wall-shaking bass which really brings presence to the experience. The surround sound effects are great as well, and the mix does a good job of letting individual sounds be heard. The stereo effects are nicely detailed and show good separation.

Disc One of The Inception Blu-ray set essentially has one big extra feature called "Extraction Mode". One can choose to watch the film in this manner, and the movie will stop at certain points to leap into interviews with the cast and filmmakers, as well as behind-the-scenes footage, Nolan's notes, and stills. These "movie-breaks" can also be viewed on their own. These 14 segments run some 44 minutes and most examine key scenes in the film. The second Blu-ray Disc included here contains a few more special features. "Dreams: Cinema of the Subconscious" (44 minutes) is a documentary hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt where a group of experts discuss what dreams are and how they affect us. "Inception: The Cobol Job" (15 minutes) is what has come to be known as a "motion-comic" -- it has the look and feel of a comic book and it's only semi-animated. The story here tells us what happened to the group before the movie starts. The odd thing about this "motion-comic" is that there is music and sound effects, but no dialogue, we must read the speech balloons. One can choose to hear the film's soundtrack in 5.1 sound. There are two art galleries -- one of conceptual art and the other of promotional art. Finally, we get three TRAILERS and thirteen TV SPOTS.