No David Attenborough....big mistake

Rating: 1/10 (19 November 2016)

This was done much better as The Arrival Of Wang an Italian effort which sees our alien visitor needing a Mandarin Chinese translator. Wang though not that great itself had a far more interesting story, was better acted and had a better twist ending.
Arrival just never got going in any meaningful way after segments of a Terry's Chocolate Orange descend to Earth in seemingly random locations and sit about until their hosts try to communicate.
Obviously none of them had seen The Visit: An Alien Encounter which set out the protocols for David Attenborough to lead an International team and begin a dialogue.
Our Attenboroughless team consisted of a woman translator who seemed to be some kind of Dr Doolittle who could talk to anything. Her scientist side-kick was another Dr Doolittle who contributed absolutely nothing other than dub the two intergalactic travellers, who likely were more intelligent than both our heroes 30 seconds after birth, with rather insulting nicknames based on some movies he liked. They are backed up with some other people who try to look intelligent by staring at instruments set up in the Orange Segment. Why any of them is actually there is never explained or glossed over in one of the many conversations lost in the bad sound.
These anonymous extras also provide a pretty stupid scene which is ripped off from Contact. A far superior offering to this dross.
The film also rips off Interstellar by virtue of the fact it is even more boring.
A sub plot is presented to us from the opening scenes to portray the idea the woman translator as a bit damaged. This continues throughout the film and basically gives away the forthcoming twist at the end which was to astound us, but about 30 minutes in it is pretty obvious what that is all about, and it never really does.
As the tension rises and countries become suspicious of each other and try to hide their information we see the usual reactions with people rioting in the street and nuclear weapons being prepared. Meanwhile the scientists (or at least the Dr Doolittle translator) race against the clock to prevent Armageddon.
The romantic overtones which were part of this clever underplot looked fake as there was zero chemistry between our translator Dr Doolittle and the other one who would be better termed Dr Dobuggerall as he literally did nothing to justify him being there.
It ended as do so many movies nowadays with a clever ending that was not that clever as it was obvious from the first quarter of the film. And that was it.
Those who think it was genius will argue that those of us who think it stupid do not 'understand' what we were seeing. I have been watching movies for nigh on 60 years and it was just another daft sci fi outing that mistakes itself as profound when it really is dull.
At least Wang would have managed to kill this team of idiots who if they had taken David Attenborough instead of Dr Doolittle and Dr Doevenless it would have at least been entertaining.