Review of Contact (1997) by Dan O — 04 Mar 2011

This is an old movie. And so I most review this movie in reference to other movies in that era. No. Why should I have to? I believe that there is a standard, a unwritten law that says no matter where or when the film is made it needs to meet those standards. The highlight of the year was Titanic and it hits all of the vital points of a good movie. This is my first review so I'm laying down the framework here.

I was watching this film in class and my teacher swore to me that THIS was the best movie he had ever seen, maybe not but one of his favorites. Really? Now to get into the meat of this movie.

This stars a women who is obsessed with outer spiace, thinking one they that she'll hear something on the radio. When her parents died, maybe she could hear them again within the depths. It's a good and terrible time in anyone's childhood. Finding hope in the stars.

She grows up and becomes a astronomer to someday listen to "little green men". Carrying her dreams to her adulthood I'll buy it.

Then, after countless rejection from funders, she gets time with the VLA, the Very Large Array to listen to stars in the galaxy. And if the trailer didn't give it away for you, like most trailers these days, she gets a transmission FROM SPACE.

Within the signal they received contains instructions for some kind of transport. The world is wowed by this discovery and the protagonist deals with some love and issues involving the discovery.

She fights to be involved with the thing she discovered and wants to head out to space meet some green men.

It was a great beginning and filling, there was this explosion scene where a guy suicide bombs the alien machine thing and the moments where they find more about this signal and what it means kept me interested. "I want to see what happens next". With all this build up to meeting the aliens, they dropped massive bombs in the storyline.

My first problem with this movie is that it has too many unnecessary scenes. I can cut five maybe ten minutes off this movie where we are just waiting for something to happen. "Yeah we get it, move on." There is only a few parts that wasn't "Blah".

What really turned for the worse is the actual contact with the aliens. She gets into the pod, goes through a giant worm hole and ends up on a beach talking to her DAD WHICH, they said, RECREATED FROM HER MIND. What? WHAT? This is what you give me?! All of this build up for that!

To make things worse, when she returns to Earth, she was only gone a split second and no one believes her story. She tells the world to believe in her through faith because she had no evidence. Did you find that disappointing? Also, she is not that stupid, why didn't she think of checking the time on the audio herself?

This movie is overall a disappointment, a story that get your hopes up just to crush it. I could've wrote a better ending.