What a silly movie!

Rating: 2/10 (10 May 2017)

Why do so many of these so-called serious sci-fi movies have ridiculous setups, assumptions, and stereotypical responses to all-but-telegraphed scenes? I was really hoping Amy Adams would hold up a sign that read "You: Our future calamari". Let's start with the problems: 12 spaceships land all over earth and everyone's given a permanent work holiday...like life just suddenly stopped because 12 overpriced (hey, they're imported!!) fuzzy pickles situated themselves over future Whole Foods locations? Don't people still need food, hospitals, education, etc? Life can't simply stop waiting for Whole Foods to place a UPC on the spaceships. Next: Any alien ship that can suspend gravity and travel through space is going to have vastly superior technology to our own; plus the aliens wouldn't have landed if they were the least bit worried about the Earth's existing weaponry. Duh! You really think guns and bombs pose any worry? When did Neil Blomkamp become the director? So, we have a military know-nothing direct the language interaction program and call the shots? Not likely. As though there's anything to "give away" to these aliens. Lastly, any species enabled with space faring ships won't have too many problems with basic communication...I know that's a grand assumption but, really. The whole approach to "teaching" the aliens wasn't much more sophisticated than training my neighbor's one-eyed dog. Piloting spaceships across the void requires lots and lots of incredible technology AND communication (certainly between the spaceships). Lastly, this whole idea of time travel and time distortion as being a necessary component of "teaching" humankind to interact is surely a stretch into the absurd (though this didn't stop many other movies from doing this, such as Interstellar). Oh, I should also mention that HP and Epson are running a special on squid ink this month in case any of the 12 ships are running low.