Clichéd and Neurotic waste of a good premise

Rating: 3/10 (20 January 2017)

Arrival is a film with a great premise, aliens arrive at Earth but how do we communicate with someone entirely different, not only in language, but in the way they are in the world? For this reason, a linguist is brought in and we follow along while she attempts to communicate.
All of this is entertaining and thought provoking.
Then the second half of the film happens and it turns to tripe and neurotic mess in no time.
The film loses sight completely and turns into a garbled mess of clichéd "one world" signaling, supernatural "chosen one foresight", attempts at emotional allegory through confusion and flashbacks/foresight add to the feeling of neuroticism and solipsism.
The protagonist goes from interesting character to narcissist neurotical and along with it the film loses its plot entirely. In fact there is no plot in the second half of the film, just an exercise in melancholia nonsense.
Overall a bad film which suffers from "too clever for my own good" syndrome, you wish some studio exec with his mind on the money would have told the director to drop the signaling and focus on story and character development.
It is a great surprise as to how this film has been receiving such a high rating. I attribute it to the same phenomenon which made people rave about Inception, the fear of appearing dumb, if you don't understand that which can't be understood, or The Emperor's New Clothes.
Waste of time and particularly waste of time for Sci-Fi fans.