Plenty to like but falls well short of greatness

Rating: 6/10 (13 April 2020)

While I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from watching Arrival, it didn't really capture my imagination in the way I had hoped. It's a reasonably engrossing watch but it kind of feels like a rehash of various different sci-fi films. There was very little about the plot, the visuals or the dialogue that I haven't seen before in some form or another. There was the alien landing, the media frenzy, the civil unrest, the stern military guys and the wise and noble central character who saves the day. Throw in a boring romance and some lazy stereotypes about China and Russia and you have yourselves a generic Hollywood blockbuster.
The one element of the film that stands out is the storyline with Louise and her daughter. These scenes had genuine intrigue and emotion and were nicely incorporated into the main plot. The other big positive about Arrival was the performance by Amy Adams. Her role wasn't particularly challenging but she still offered a level of subtlety and delicacy that is so often lacking in films like this. It was a huge shame that Jeremy Renner was cast alongside her as he was laughably inept by comparison. It was also unfortunate to see Forest Whitaker given such a corny one-dimensional role knowing what he is capable of as an actor.
Where the film went wrong was with the communication development between the humans and aliens. I won't go into detail on this as there are plenty of negative reviews that really labour the point, but it was unfeasible that things would progress the way they did. The conversation between Louise and Costello towards the end of the film was laughably corny and by this point I was just wanted it all to end.
The alien genre is a difficult beast to tame and very few movies have done it well. Arrival promises a lot early on and was close to pulling it off but was let down badly by some lazy writing and weak characters.