This is a movie review for "Contact", released July 11, 1997. I watched this movie in February 2020.
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 2 Hours and 30 Minutes
Trailer
Official MPAA Rating (According to IMDB.com):
G / General Audiences
PG / Parental Guidance Suggested
PG-13 / Parents Strongly Cautioned
R / Restricted
X
Not Rated
Notable Cast
Jena Malone ... Young Ellie
David Morse ... Ted Arroway
Jodie Foster ... Eleanor Arroway
Geoffrey Blake ... Fisher
William Fichtner ... Kent
Matthew McConaughey ... Palmer Joss
Tom Skerritt ... David Drumlin
John Hurt ... S.R. Hadden
Plot
Ellie wanted to be able to contact those from outside of this world. She searched and searched, fighting for funding and support. When she finally hears a signal, can she prove that it came from somewhere extraterrestrial? What will this mean for humanity?
Rating Criteria
0/5 – No value whatsoever. Absolute waste of time.
1/5 – Barely worth any time.
2/5 – Pathetic but has a bit of something to hold the attention a little.
3/5 – Somewhat kept the attention but could definitely have used more.
4/5 – Good, but not awe-strikingly amazing. Could have maybe used a bit more to the movie.
5/5 – Go see it! Wonderful movie all around. – characters, music, theme, story line, etc.
4/5 - *SPOILERS* This is an interesting movie about how we might be able to get in contact with intelligence outside of this world. The main character started trying to make contact when she was a child so many years later, she was able to receive the contact as an adult. The signal ends up containing blueprints for something, which turn out to be a design for space travel. Ellie decides to be the one to go for this trip, as she is the one that broke the code. There are issues along the way to building this design, including potential sabotage.
She manages to get through and here's the scene of the contact:
When she returns, she asks how long she has been away and they say about 40 seconds. "How can that be? I was away for 18 hours." [We don't see proof of this declaration of 18 hours, not even her watch showing a different time, but that's how long she says she was gone.] There is then an investigation involving the government of USA questioning Ellie why she has no evidence: "Are we supposed to take it on faith that your trip happened because you brought back no evidence?" She admits that, as a scientist, she must concede that it is hard to believe without evidence but that it did happen, no matter what others thought. She leaves the interrogation to find thousands of people outside of the building to support her, though there were others previously that were raving against the whole "let's build an alien structure" thing (because why should science tell us what God looks like).
The guy that she's been seeing (Palmer Joss) is asked at the end what he thinks, since he is one of those with his finger on "the religious pulse of the nation". He ends up saying that though he might not see eye to eye with her, he believes her.
Two people of the government end up talking later about her trip and one of them goes "it is strange that there was 18 hours of static". They end up agreeing to give her a hearty grant and (unspoken) hoping that no one pushes it further.
Cut scene to 18 months later. Ellie is a tour guide about the satellite dishes that are turned towards the heavens and she won't give her opinion out to a kid about whether there is life beyond the world.
*REWATCH January 2021*: I thought I had posted this review but it turns out that I was only in the middle of it. I had watched the "Everything Wrong with" video by @CinemaSins and have to say that they do bring up some good points. I rewatched the movie again this week and there are a few things that unnerve me.
Her relationship with Palmer Joss is brief, tense, and strange. They have differing views but for some reason, even after many months, he still has a thing for her. In fact, after their first encounter (one night stand), he asked how he could contact her and she said for him to leave his number. What does he do? Leave his number. What does she do? Get really upset that she lost her job at the SETI station, packed up her things, left the number, and moved on. And yet, over 14 months later, when he sees her again, he's like "I'm very interested in making contact with you". At one point, he ends up saying that the reason that he didn't approve of her as a candidate to go through the machine was because he had feelings for her, but she didn't even say anything about her feelings. Sure, a kiss, but why doesn't she show any feelings? It almost seems like a 2D relationship, with mostly him doing the work to create the relationship. But it is enough for her to want to get out of the seatbelt in the orb and return to Earth? ...terrible writing on the relationship.
Why did the alien use a image of her father to talk with her? "So it is familiar to you?" I would almost say 'dude, too soon. Ellie is still having issues about losing her father at 9 years old. (We saw this after her one night fling with Palmer Joss.) [Why didn't they tell the viewer sooner, I don't know.]
Why did they have a blind character in the story, only useful when someone with very acute hearing? Like when they are about to send her into the machine, he was there so he could say "I hear her! She's good to go". That is rather mean to the character. I would have loved to see more interactions between Ellie and Kent.
The ending of the movie was pretty bad because here she just finished giving her testimony to the investigation, she got her grants, and yet she's okay with just giving tours and not giving her opinion? Anti-climatic!!
As a second view, I would say this is more of a 3/5 than a 4/5. It is still interesting regarding first contact but.... :-/
Anyways, that's my movie review! Thank you for reading. More reviews to come eventually.
~ Gracie Mae DeLunac
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"Everything Wrong with Contact in 19 minutes or less"
Credit: @CinemaSins
1100.
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