Very Disappointed

Rating: 2/10 (1 February 2017)

My adult techie, Star Trek kids loved this movie and encouraged my wife and I to watch it. Both of us were disappointed and had trouble understanding why they liked it so much.
This movie is kind of like a boring Close Encounters. I kept having problems with suspending disbelief with things like the fact that these incredibly advanced aliens had no clue about how to communicate with humans and left the translation attempts entirely on us. With their technology, they hadn't listened to any of our radio broadcasts or deep space probes? And they can't figure out how to squirt ink patterns in human language even after being tutored?? Or that the alien's "written" language is so readily and quickly deciphered by the experts? The plot develops slowly and ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of time travel/displacement, with the heroine's "prior" loss of her child from cancer emerging as the primary underlying theme. Meanwhile, the world is reacting to these non-threatening aliens like the Zombie Apocalypse? Total worldwide diplomatic breakdowns over the misinterpretation of a single word?? Can you imagine how differently Steven Spielberg would have done this?
Other complaints are: The military aspects seem wrong. While Amy Adams seems OK in her role, Jeremy Renner seems totally miscast, a wise-guy in a role that should be sensitive and romantic. I hated the music which seems sappy, trite, and out-of-place and is always reminding you of itself. What's wrong with NOT having orchestra music to help you with your emotions? And the last-second "save" in the climax scene with Amy on the sat phone in the decontamination room just doesn't make much sense from a dramatic, let alone technical standpoint. I've seen and read enough sci-fi about time-travel/shifting to know that this is an especially tricky concept to deal with both logically, scientifically, and philosophically, but this film misses the mark on all 3.