The Best Part of Arrival Is Its Departure

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2016)

After seeing the trailer and so many glowing reviews, I was really looking forward to "Arrival". Everything pointed to one of the best sci-fi movies in recent history, but the film failed to deliver on nearly every count. It's a snooze fest. What a disappointment!
Amy Adams did turn in an excellent performance as Dr. Louise Banks. She is really the only reason to ever watch this film. It's slow, boring and devoid of anything that borders on entertainment. I've seen it compared to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" but that was a compelling story with stellar production values. "Arrival" is neither. I've seen sci-fi movies from the 1950s with more convincing visuals.
The story is as muddled as the visual effects:

The alien vessels look like giant grains of black rice.

The creatures are basically large squid floating in dense fog.

They bring us a "universal language" that they demonstrate by squirting ink on a window pane and refer to as a "weapon" (apparently there is no word for "language" in their universal language.)

Jeremy Renner as Ian Donnelly, the supposed physicist, didn't seem to know anything about physics. He did nothing but follow Louise around.

Most of the story line involves Dr. Banks and Ian going back and forth to the big black rice ship trying to communicate with the foggy squid. Their painfully slow progress is as exciting as watching a snail derby.

The ending is laughable. As I filed out of the theater, I turned to my wife and said, "I'm totally confused". She laughed and said, "I was about to say the same thing."
We overheard other people near us expressing similar reactions. One man said, "I didn't get it, did you?" and another said, "What did we just see?!?"
By midway through "Arrival" I was praying for its rapid departure.