Again, Hollywood Hype Creates a Vastly Over-rated Hit

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2017)

The only way Arrival could have cost $47 million to make would be for the actors to get most of that sum. There just wasn't much to the film in both location filming and special effects.
It seems to me the production company may have been trying to do a number on the IRS come tax time. There were only five basic locations: Amy Adam's home in the film, the college where she teaches, the army base, the field where the alien spacecraft was and a very nondescript spaceship interior.
As for the film...in other times it would be a B sci-fi movie. But these days, the millennials are making into a mind bending sci-fi masterpiece, which it isn't.
We are supposed to buy that technically advanced giant squid-like creatures not only build huge spacecraft and travel all over the galaxy, but they can foretell the future as well. And apparently one of their visions told them to come to the Earth...more specifically 12 of them come to Earth, hovering peacefully over various nations.
Yet, with this on their minds, if they have any, and all their evolutionary and inter galactic knowledge they don't have a simple tourist English phrase book among them...they can't communicate with anyone. That is until Adams comes along. She's a linguist recruited by the army to translate a single grunt sound that came from the aliens. Good luck on that.
The aliens hold an open house for the earthlings hoping that someone will talk to them. Adams rises into the ship and meets the space aliens who appear behind a glass barrier (we assume their atmosphere is different from earth's).
The outer space cephalopods seem to be dancing around similar as marionettes would do...except no strings are visible. It's really out of the campy 1950s movie scene.
Nothing much is explained in the film which leaves the audience to figure out how Adams finally communicates with the visitors. At the end you are left with questions and no definite answers.