I tried to enjoy this movie

Rating: 6/10 (11 November 2016)

I'm not typically one to write movie reviews, but I felt very mislead by the lofty 8.5 review that originally inspired me to see this movie. (A higher rating than 2001: A Space Odyssey). My overall impression is that they took a fantastic idea and just fell short trying to execute it.
CONTAINS SPOILERS:
From the beginning of the film, it was clear that all of the characters were static.
Alien ships land all over Earth
Army officer seeks out random liberal arts language/communications professor who was apparently the only such person with security clearance. (Don't they have military linguists and communications experts for just this?)
Officer plays audio clip of indistinguishable alien audio and demands the professor tell them what it means on the spot, yet refuses to believe she would need more than a 10 second clip to decipher a new language.
Fast forward, the Earth starts peacefully communicating with these ships and actually start to learn the language. The countries that are always the bad guys in movies cut communications with the rest of the world and begin to turn hostile toward the aliens.
As the linguist literally learns the language and has peaceful communication, the Army decides the only option is to attack. They take up and detonate a single block of explosives inside the ship. That's apparently all the Army thought was necessary to destroy a 1500 ft. tall spaceship that defies the laws of physics.
The linguist is saved from the blast by the aliens. The aliens send a cab for her, and she goes back up. They tell her she's the chosen one and can see into the future. She saves the world by looking into the future and then telling a Chinese general what his wife's dying words were. She sees her whole life, and she unites all of humanity.
The injected love interest (who offers no valuable input aside from standing around) basically says, "We discovered an entirely new species that shattered our interpretations of time-space, but you're the one I can't stop thinking about."
What this movie taught me: 1) The Army in incapable of rational thought. 2) A pretty woman is enough to distract a physicist from the greatest scientific discovery of all mankind. 3) A liberal arts degree may actually be useful.
Bottom line: Not a terrible movie but FAR from 8.5/10.