I don't understand people who claim it's a "mindfuck" movie. The plot is pretty straightforward and self-consistent. What it is is an extremely well put-together movie.

The runtime of that movie is 148 minutes-almost two and a half hours. Yet it doesn't feel that long. It also manages to have three different groups of characters doing separate things, without confusing the audience. The last move I can recall trying to do that level of simultaneity was The Phantom Menace, which failed horribly at that task. Therefore, I find Inception to be a very interesting movie intellectually, because I think it's fun to think about the techniques that Nolan uses to make a 2.5 hour, multithreaded movie so entertaining.