Overrated, overlong and dull

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2016)

Walking out of Arrival, I turned to my wife and said "I'm stunned". It was not the screenplay, the acting or the story that left me in this state. I was flabbergasted that anyone had been able to raise the money to make this truly awful film.
The story was feeble: bunch of aliens turn up and they're not awful, but want to teach us how to help ourselves. They communicate with squiggles that only Any Adams can decipher. Oh and somehow she manages to save the world by spontaneously speaking Mandarin.
The plot holes are simply too numerous to mention: the way in which a random academic is simply allowed to run the operation is not credible, the dialogue is wooden (and clichéd). The acting is lame. The special effects are so so. The aliens are laughably bad.
The editor must've been on strike when they brought the footage in since he left in oodles of material that could easily be left out (if I see another floating, cloudy scene of an obscured heptapod, I think I'll retch). The cameraman also had an off day and the director, I hope, will soon be looking for other work in the film business -- perhaps he can sell the popcorn, since he's clearly not up to the job of telling a story.
All that said, the other reason I am stunned is that, at the time of writing, this film has an 8.4 rating on IMDb and the showing that I attended was sold out (although some folks wisely didn't bother to take their seats).
For me it was 116 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. For someone else, this is a film of genius. I guess that life would be boring if everyone liked the same stuff.