So stupid when it could have been intelligent

Rating: 2/10 (21 November 2016)

I just got back from the cinema and I really cannot understand how anybody could have perceived this as an intelligent film; I spent much of it shaking my head.
It started slowly which in many cases can be quite positive but already I felt that the film was going to get stuck in a bog.
Then, once the plot started to unfold, we have an army officer, presumably not from the Intelligence Corp, playing a recording of somebody asking an alien where they are from in English and the incomprehensible reply. I suppose that this in some way sums up US foreign policy but hang on, we have the worlds leading linguist on hand, she will crack this.
So, having explained the enormous difficulty of translating an unknown language without any clues, rather than going right back to basics to establish a foundation, say with numbers, she dives straight in with a hand written sign saying 'HUMAN'.
There were unexplained leaps all over the place and the audience was left to assume that the linguist was so clever that she cracked the code in the blink of an eye as they were trying to count the alien's tentacles.
I used to be a bit of a sci-fi fan but CGI ruined it for me, it has to make sense - even if it is only theoretical or fantasy sense - this film lacked logic and cohesion. The canary (if that's what it was) was corny and the romantic angle was as pointless as the physics professor's presence throughout the film.
It probably says a great deal about how films get made these days, try to accommodate as many interests as possible, bit of action, bit of sci-fi, bit of romance etc. and the result is something that's a bit of rubbish.
I rarely leave a cinema before the last of the credits but my companions were on their feet as soon as they started to roll so I never got to see if Noam Chomsky had been a consultant. ;-)