This contains opinions, and I may not always have hedged them as thoroughly as usual. YMMV.
Some of it is overhype--I went expecting a big mindscrew, to have to pay attention every second to follow the plot, and what I got was a nicely-constructed scifi action-heist flick. It was elaborate but not really complex--each level of the dream had its own color pallette, costumes, scenery, even style of action movie that it was being, and no one was ever active on more than one level at a time. Exposition was plentiful and clear. I honestly found it all pretty straightforward.
(Sidebar: now, that nicely-constructed scifi action-heist flick was awesome! I loved all the different styles of action movie colliding, and fitting so well with the personality of the dreamers, and the synchronization, and the cool scifi back-end and the thoughtfulness. So that part of it is overhype affecting me, and not the movie's fault. Acknowledged.)
But. The ending. The ending is bad. The ending is not a mind-blower, because a) it's been done a thousand times (although rarely better set-up) and b) because it WAS so well set-up, I saw it coming a mile away. It's the first thing you expect in a story like this, to begin with; the phonecall home and conversation with his father convinced me; and the scene in Mombasa iced the cake. It was the only over-the-top action sequence of the film to happen in real life, and it was--this is key--a BOND-STYLE action sequence, particularly evocative of the parkour in the recent Casino Royale. When you connect that to the fact that Eames' dream-level was styled after the ski-action in Goldeneye and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that Mombasa was Eames' introduction--yeah. Nail, coffin, done. The entire movie is a dream, which means none of it--the character relationships, the actions--really matter outside of the question of whether or not Cobb escapes his head. Which a) we don't know the real Cobb, only the dream-Cobb who is a different person and b) he doesn't.
Now, you might want to try and salvage some of the movie by saying only the ending takes place in Limbo, but there's way too much foreshadowing for that. The only counterargument is that the top works right up until the end, but that doesn't matter, and I'll tell you way--the person holding the Totem can always self-sabotage. Why shouldn't anyone else handle your Totem? Because if they know the details, they can fool you. But you, by definition, know all the details. If you want to fool yourself subconsciously, it's entirely trivial. Which means--up until the end, Cobb wanted to fool himself, but after his catharsis with Moll, some part of him took out the top and spun and kept it spinning when he got home to his kids.
Which is another reason why it's a weak ending--it's not over yet. Some part of him is still fighting back, or it wouldn't be spinning. The trouble is, the only way out of Limbo is suicide, and there's no satisfying narrative way to portray suicide triumphantly. That's why we cut away from Saito--not just for suspense, but because it would feel wrong to 'win' by having an old man shoot himself. Even moreso would it be crazy to call the 'happy' ending the one where Cobb realizes he's been faked out again, all along, and kills himself in front of his children.
The 'best' ending, barring some intervention from outside by his father, is if we accept that Cobb is going to continue to be trapped in his own mind, but in a version of his dream where he's forgiven himself. After all, Moll-the-guilt-complex wasn't trying to help him wake up either; she was just torturing him. At least that's over. (And notice--the person who can free him, Saito, who is always preternaturally one step ahead of him, is ultimately just as trapped as he is and needs to be saved. Because he is him. He is his own judge.) But that's a pretty weak happy ending. And it still means all those other fascinating characters don't exist, and didn't do that cool stuff.
(Suicide being the only way out of Limbo is honestly a weakness in the construction of the narrative, because it leads inevitably to these uncomfortable broken Aesop endings, where Moll was essentially right in everything but the fine detail. But it's pretty well papered-over until the ending, which blows it wide open.)
So--IMO the ending is unsatisfying, predictable, not really an ending and exposes the flaws in the moral construction of the narrative. And the biggest problem is that it's SO well set-up--it's thoroughly integrated into the whole movie, so you can't just switch it out or patch it over easily. Or I can't anyway. I don't know how the movie could've ended on a stronger note, especially being as long as it was already, but I found the ending we got hugely underwhelming.
(Sidebar: now, that nicely-constructed scifi action-heist flick was awesome! I loved all the different styles of action movie colliding, and fitting so well with the personality of the dreamers, and the synchronization, and the cool scifi back-end and the thoughtfulness. So that part of it is overhype affecting me, and not the movie's fault. Acknowledged.)
But. The ending. The ending is bad. The ending is not a mind-blower, because a) it's been done a thousand times (although rarely better set-up) and b) because it WAS so well set-up, I saw it coming a mile away. It's the first thing you expect in a story like this, to begin with; the phonecall home and conversation with his father convinced me; and the scene in Mombasa iced the cake. It was the only over-the-top action sequence of the film to happen in real life, and it was--this is key--a BOND-STYLE action sequence, particularly evocative of the parkour in the recent Casino Royale. When you connect that to the fact that Eames' dream-level was styled after the ski-action in Goldeneye and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that Mombasa was Eames' introduction--yeah. Nail, coffin, done. The entire movie is a dream, which means none of it--the character relationships, the actions--really matter outside of the question of whether or not Cobb escapes his head. Which a) we don't know the real Cobb, only the dream-Cobb who is a different person and b) he doesn't.
Now, you might want to try and salvage some of the movie by saying only the ending takes place in Limbo, but there's way too much foreshadowing for that. The only counterargument is that the top works right up until the end, but that doesn't matter, and I'll tell you way--the person holding the Totem can always self-sabotage. Why shouldn't anyone else handle your Totem? Because if they know the details, they can fool you. But you, by definition, know all the details. If you want to fool yourself subconsciously, it's entirely trivial. Which means--up until the end, Cobb wanted to fool himself, but after his catharsis with Moll, some part of him took out the top and spun and kept it spinning when he got home to his kids.
Which is another reason why it's a weak ending--it's not over yet. Some part of him is still fighting back, or it wouldn't be spinning. The trouble is, the only way out of Limbo is suicide, and there's no satisfying narrative way to portray suicide triumphantly. That's why we cut away from Saito--not just for suspense, but because it would feel wrong to 'win' by having an old man shoot himself. Even moreso would it be crazy to call the 'happy' ending the one where Cobb realizes he's been faked out again, all along, and kills himself in front of his children.
The 'best' ending, barring some intervention from outside by his father, is if we accept that Cobb is going to continue to be trapped in his own mind, but in a version of his dream where he's forgiven himself. After all, Moll-the-guilt-complex wasn't trying to help him wake up either; she was just torturing him. At least that's over. (And notice--the person who can free him, Saito, who is always preternaturally one step ahead of him, is ultimately just as trapped as he is and needs to be saved. Because he is him. He is his own judge.) But that's a pretty weak happy ending. And it still means all those other fascinating characters don't exist, and didn't do that cool stuff.
(Suicide being the only way out of Limbo is honestly a weakness in the construction of the narrative, because it leads inevitably to these uncomfortable broken Aesop endings, where Moll was essentially right in everything but the fine detail. But it's pretty well papered-over until the ending, which blows it wide open.)
So--IMO the ending is unsatisfying, predictable, not really an ending and exposes the flaws in the moral construction of the narrative. And the biggest problem is that it's SO well set-up--it's thoroughly integrated into the whole movie, so you can't just switch it out or patch it over easily. Or I can't anyway. I don't know how the movie could've ended on a stronger note, especially being as long as it was already, but I found the ending we got hugely underwhelming.