Review of Arrival (2016) by Axgrinder — 13 Nov 2016

As a “thought-provoking” movie, Arrival is over-rated drivel. Amy Adams is a good actor, and she does yeoman’s work here, but she breaks no new ground. The movie is a “Fail” almost every other level. Forest Whitaker is wooden, and The Notebook like story within a story is lame.

Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist, trying to figure out how to speak to aliens that have arrived at earth in dark, giant, scary looking, pods that look like slag. The aliens have no spoken or alphabet based written language. Instead, the aliens converse using ink blots (which look like the stain that a wine glass might leave on a cardboard coaster, and made me wonder if the writer came up with the whole idea while sitting at a bar.) Equally boring and conventional are the aliens. (Why do aliens always seem to have squid-like bodies?).

Dr. Banks is apparently the only gifted linguist left in the world, and the gov’t seeks out her expertise to the exclusion of all others. (Ugh!) Dr. Banks speculates that the aliens are so advanced that they have no apparent way to communicate with humans, and thus it is up to the humans to figure out how to communicate with them. (Groan!) For Kumbaya reasons, the aliens have split the message they want to convey to the people of earth into 12 parts, and use 12 different space craft to deliver it to 12 different populations across the earth. (Ay Yi Yi!) Of course, the reaction of earth people is to go loot Best Buy and then try to blow up the aliens.

There is a story within the story about time travel (Oh no!) and Amy Adams daughter who, we learn early on, has died from some rare disease. This is supposed to give the movie its heart, but when you separate out the two movies halves, neither part has enough weight to give the movie any real substance. As far as director Denis Vileneuve goes, I liked his work in Sicario. Arrival is a step backwards.