Entertainment : \'Inception\' makes the audience think

Before you go to see “Inception” at the Vinton Palace Theatre this week, I have a challenge for you:

Can you, in only two minutes, create a maze that is so complicated that it takes another person more than one minute to solve it?

(More about the maze issue later)

“Inception” brings to the Palace something that does not come from Hollywood nearly often enough: A movie that makes you think.

Here’s the story:

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has discovered a way to steal ideas from people's minds while they dream. This has led him to a profitable career.

It's also cost him his wife, and made him a fugitive from the law who is looking for a way to get back to his children.

A powerful client who is aware of Cobb's abilities offers him a challenge: Do one more job and you can return to your children.

But this challenge is much bigger: Instead of stealing an idea from the mind of a powerful person, he needs to plant one in the mind of his mark.

Of course, by doing this, Cobb is also saving the world from Big Oil: He has to convince the heir of an oil tycoon to break up his father's monopoly.

Even though Cobb is dealing in the dream world, there are real-world dangers associated with this process. A person's subconscious fights these invasions with "projections"  -- people in those dreams who can become violent while trying to protect the mark from Dom. And while being killed in a dream means you only wake up, being injured in a dream can cause injuries in the real world. And there's also the danger of believing the dream world is the real world....

And since the only way to get the man to think that Cobb's idea is his own is to make him have a dream within a dream within a dream, the dangers become exponentially greater as they delve deeper into the  subconscious.

Why you should go:

Like I said, “Inception” makes you think. That is good enough reason to go see it. And if you want to understand the ending, you will be thinking for more than two hours.

What you should know before you go:

1. Do NOT, as I did, go to see “Incepton” on an IMAX screen. The action is too intense and fast to absorb on a screen that huge.
2. 2. Although “Inception” makes you think, it can be as mentally challenging as studying for a test. You have to pay attention to what is happening on five different planes simultaneously. While you watch what is happening in the real world (the characters are asleep on a 10-hour plane ride) you also have to keep up with the 3 dream worlds as well as the final level where Cobb must go to find his own reality.

Inception is rated PG 13 for action sequences, violence and language.

About the maze challenge:

Dom Cobb (Leonardo D) offers this challenge to Adriadne (Ellen Page) the bright young college student he hires to help him construct the dreams of his targets. The purpose of the challenge is to get her to think more specifically, more clearly. I knew when I heard that line that I would use it to begin my review. I also knew I wanted to try the maze challenge.

You can, indeed, create a maze in two minutes that takes more than one minute to solve. In fact, with any of the several on-line maze creating programs I found, you could create such a maze in a matter of seconds.

But while that accomplishes the task, I do not believe it follows the spirit of the challenge.

Making a maze is easy. It’s making a maze complicated that can get hard.

To make a maze, all you do is start with a piece of paper (or any other surface.) Draw a continuous route from your starting point to the end. That’s the solution to your maze.

The trick to making a maze complicated is the false routes you add to your maze to confuse the solver. The more dead-ends and loops you can create, the more difficult the maze is to solve, even though the route from Point A to Point B can be quite simple.