so close but so far.

Rating: 1/10 (10 November 2016)

This should have been brilliant!
****SPOILER ALERT*****
I love Amy Adams and think she is a great actress, and the first half of this films is suitably spooky, fully of mystery - but as soon as she gets in to the alien space ship and starts writing her name LOUISE, I just shook my head. Why is it so hard for Hollywood to write a decent script???
We spent YEARS deciding what to put on the side of the Voyager spaceship in case any sentient life forms discovered it, and used pictographs and hieroglyphics, but in this film the world's best linguist (allegedly) who knows Sanskrit (so therefore must know alien languages) just stands there and writes LOUISE in bad handwriting on a small white board and shouts her name whist enthusiastically thumping her chest!
That is how the English behave abroad, not how you make first contact with an alien race.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind did this so well with sound and colour, but here we just have a flip chart and a marker.
such a flippant regard for science makes all the rest of the film silly. People were laughing in the cinema when Ian started saying his name, and walking up and down 'IAN WALKS'. And then all of a sudden Lousie can recognise the word for time travel, which is a very complex concept, and all in the space of a few days.
Clearly the director and writer had a really great idea, and set up the world very well, but as soon at they go to the complicated bit - how do you actually communicate with an Alien from another planet who has no cultural references, then they bottled it and threw in a Voice Over from Ian, who we never quite worked out what he was there for. It's an old film making trick - if you are stuck thrown in a voice over that explains stuff.
They didn't even bother to try colours, or sounds, or lights, or music - just a white board and a marker and Louise has been writing in English, whilst round the world everyone will be writing in their own language and confusing the poor aliens.
And if you have got Forest Whittaker the Oscar winner in your film, for god's sake give him something to do! He has no purpose in this film, all his lines could be cut. Just have soldiers grab Alison and fly her to the space ship - give her the briefing in the chopper...
The director and writer should be forced to watch Close encounters of the third kind until they appreciate how pathetic their film becomes.
Such a shame. 8 out of ten for the first 30 minutes and 2 out of ten for the slow fart of the rest of the film.