Contact

Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: July 11, 1997

7.8	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 224 Ratings

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eTurkeyMay 7, 2012

It's interesting that with all the hi-tech technology and wonderful gadgets this film shows off on a grand scale, at the end of the day it doesn't differ much from when E.T. decided to phone home. However, this time mankind is being lured byIt's interesting that with all the hi-tech technology and wonderful gadgets this film shows off on a grand scale, at the end of the day it doesn't differ much from when E.T. decided to phone home. However, this time mankind is being lured by those aliens and in actual fact - they might not be aliens at all. But I digress. Essentially this movie is about the unknown and ones interpretation of the overall philosophy of life and its meaning. I don't know what I was expecting from 'Contact' but too many questions were left unanswered for my liking...… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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MeritCobaMay 20, 2016

After spending a third of a trillion dollars Ellie, played by Jodie Foster, finds herself at the other end of a worm hole. That is to say: back on Earth. It took her 18 seconds to do so.

Earth, inhabited by moronic creatures called humans,After spending a third of a trillion dollars Ellie, played by Jodie Foster, finds herself at the other end of a worm hole. That is to say: back on Earth. It took her 18 seconds to do so.

Earth, inhabited by moronic creatures called humans, has just found itself to be the target of practical joker living on a planet orbiting Vega or thereabouts. Thereabouts cause that planet was probably just a relay station. It send them humans an instruction manual for building a device nobody on Vega or thereabouts could afford to build, hoping them humans would do it. And they did. In fact, they made even two of them. How stupidly funny is that.

To their great embarrassment one of the humans appeared so they sent it back with some garbled message that would have the slow witted creatures pondering stuff for the rest of their pathetic existence. What is next? Ellie asks her dead daddy, the guise the alien has assumed for her(and not Adolf H, which would have been funny). Well, we sent you back without a shred of evidence and nobody will believe you. And we erased all the tapes, and the audio and anything that could proof we exist. How about that? It will be just like .. a religion.
Fine with me, Ellie says. For as we have found out from the movie, Ellie doesn't believe in gawd.. but she does believe in something after having had her trip to another world. So she has become a spiritual person so she can have intercourse with the religious guy named Palmer Joss without feeling ashamed for it. (In hindsight the painful look on her face when she kisses Palmer might very well be because Foster was a closeted lesbian, which by Jove would at least have made the movie more interesting if Ellie had been too. Nuke them straight people! )

So the whole movie, aptly named contact, was about finding an excuse for the atheist (assumed closeted lesbian) Ellie to have (straight) intercourse with the christian Palmer. Two third of a trillion dollars spent on matchmaking and brain reprogramming.. Does this movie get closure that way? Perhaps it does.

The more I think of this movie, the lower my scoring. The biggest part of the movie turns around a conflict between science and religion, in which the latter means: the christian faith of the american kind. 95 percent of the humans are religious someone says to atheist Ellie, which is why she doesn't get elected at first to go and visit the aliens. She could have replied: but only a third of them are christian. So who will it be? A christian volunteer? A muslim one? A jewish? A buddhist? Which religion shall be required? And if it will be christian, which denomination? The catholic one? Oh and did I tell you about my sexual orientation? Only 4% of the female population confesses themselves to be lesbian. And how about white vs black vs asian? What race shall represent earth?
But we just skip over that one shall we.. cause, darn it, this is america and there is just one american gawd and that is the white christian one and no other exist!

The nicest part of the movie is the beginning sequence, in which we see no humans at all. The camera travels backwards from the planet into outer space. Cool that!
In between there are some more nice shots of desert landscapes and some sequences about the planets.
As long as there are no humans in it, the movie is actually nice.

Jodie Foster, how I like her, is at her worst here. She seems constantly on the brink of a nervous breakdown, about to scream or about to cry. Why did they send that nervous wreck to the aliens? No wonder they returned her and without any evidence so they will not send another one. Cause them humans are just too stupid to get that travelling through wormholes mucks with space and time. But you know.. Einstein is dead and with him all the brilliant scientists have died out.. Stephen Hawking? Never heard of the guy. Carl Sagan? Wasn't he a script writer for sci-fi movies? Higgs? Penrose? Witten? Just a bunch of loonies.

The movie has also Blofield in it. He is named Hadden. Hadden is a deus ex machina. When the plot grounds to a halt, he steps in with a lotta money and gets it floating again. So money is the gawd here? Jup.. the movie is almost brilliant. But there aren't any cats in it though so it remains almost.

At the end of the movie Ellie is back were she started: in command of a large array of antennae listening to the universe. Did anything happen in between? Apparently not. It was all a dream probably or maybe she got back to another earth in another universe? Isn't that her once deceased dad in the background walking toward her over a pearly white beach? What was it all about? Well we see her looking up at the night sky showing a milliard sparkling stars. She has become that spiritual person in which the scientist and the religious nutcase have become one. I feel at peace with the universe now. We are not alone.So let's depart with that gooey feeling. Yuck.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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TyranianDec 23, 2019

This film has not aged well, its ideas are seriously unsophisticated by today's standards and this hampers its credibility.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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bigjon1958Jun 27, 2016

Average movie, I'd seen this movie when it came out 19 years ago and had remembered it being better than it was watching it this time around. The movie is a little slow and has some odd twists. Overall, I did like the concept. And theAverage movie, I'd seen this movie when it came out 19 years ago and had remembered it being better than it was watching it this time around. The movie is a little slow and has some odd twists. Overall, I did like the concept. And the ending was eventful - I liked it. but I thought they could have done a lot move with this movie and left somewhat disappointed as far as my high expectations prior to watching the movie.… Expand

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TrailesqueJun 22, 2022

This is a solid Hollywood blockbuster that is saved from insipidity by presenting some interesting possibilities and good-looking effects. It also helps that an actress as cool and captivating as Jodie Foster is in the lead role. This wasThis is a solid Hollywood blockbuster that is saved from insipidity by presenting some interesting possibilities and good-looking effects. It also helps that an actress as cool and captivating as Jodie Foster is in the lead role. This was based on a novel by popular scientist/public intellectual Carl Sagan, who was a professor at Cornell U., and it is interesting to note that much of the story is about people jockeying for credit and influence, rather than about scientific discovery. There is a lot of corny stuff that happens here: e.g a completely unbelievable and chaste romance between Dr. Arraway and a religious scholar played by Matthew McConnaughey, and a picture-perfect little scientist childhood for Dr. Arraway. Tom Skerritt is good as the obnoxious Dr. Drumlin; he really excels in that kind of role. The actual alien experience is unexpected, and done very nicely.… Expand

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BroyaxJan 14, 2017

Par où commencer dans ce gloubi-boulga hystéro-mystico-scientifique ? par Jodie Foster bien sûr : elle porte très haut le film à bout de bras avec une force et une conviction admirables et même... entousiasmantes. Quelle merveilleuse actricePar où commencer dans ce gloubi-boulga hystéro-mystico-scientifique ? par Jodie Foster bien sûr : elle porte très haut le film à bout de bras avec une force et une conviction admirables et même... entousiasmantes. Quelle merveilleuse actrice en vérité, je vous le dis !

Ce n'est pas que cela néanmoins, l'histoire -ou plutôt son substrat- est très inventive... mais son substrat seulement, pas son développement benêt. En effet, comme dans tout film réalisé par Robert Zemeckis, la naïveté et la candeur s'invitent dans tous les plans et à tous les étages, elles ruinent conséquemment toute vélléité de vraisemblance ou de crédibilité. On peut prendre ça pour de la "poésie" mais il faudrait devenir aussi bêta que le film lui-même (bonjour les dégâts !).

Rien que le début ou le temps d'exposition incroyablement long et larmoyant est un terrible avertissement : "mièvre à en devenir chèvre, tu deviendras". La fin -qui n'en finit pas- est du même tonneau neuneu, le tonneau lourdingue et moralisateur, donneur de leçons à la petite semaine. En outre, la musique geignarde qui ne cesse de couiner tout au long du film est à la limite du supportable.

Et puis deux heures et demi, putain, faut se les taper : encore le tic compulsif habituel du Zemeckis qui se fait décidément un devoir de nous faire chier, même avec une histoire, enfin un substrat science-fictionnel d'histoire intéressante. Zemeckis n'en reste pas moins un bon faiseur, techniquement parlant : il n'est en effet pas le dernier des manches à la mise en scène, on doit lui reconnaître ça.

Par ailleurs, la problématique mystico-religieuse opposée à l'empirisme forcené de la science est bien abordée, malgré le ballot bellâtre Mathieu McConauburne aussi convaincant en prêtre que John Wayne dans Don Camillo.

Heureusement, un autre acteur -brillant, lui- est là pour nous émerveiller de son charismatique jeu d'enfoiré coutumier dont il maîtrise si bien la mécanique : James Woods ! hilarant et percutant, on ne s'en lasse pas. Tom Skerritt, second couteau solide, s'avère également excellent dans le faux cul de service, ce qui ne mange pas de pain. Sans compter évidemment le (trop) petit rôle de John Hurt, acteur-né magistral.

Pas si mauvais finalement ce Contact... mais pas bon non plus.… Expand

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Experiment626Dec 26, 2020

The message in this movie was a little too on the nose for me. Story was fine until they hit you over the head at the end.

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