A poorly executed and cliché-ridden disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (25 March 2017)

Like many, I enjoy a good sci-fi yarn - serious or light - I'm not bothered, but the one thing that is required is either a belief in the story (CE3K) or total disbelief (Mars Attacks) - Unfortunately, this movie takes itself so seriously, but delivers so poorly, that it becomes unintentionally laughable. I will summarise where I feel this movie went so wrong.
WARNING: SPOILERS
Which army would waste an army General's time in flying to a linguist's house rather than sending a less senior operative? You can not expect any linguist to listen to a 15 second series of alien grunts and moans on a Dictaphone and expect them to immediately translate them. The UFOs are revealed too early to build any anticipation. Louise meets her future husband on the army camp - where his job as a physicist is to do no physics, but to interpret some alien language (which should be her role) - otherwise he just follows her back and forth into the ship saying nothing. In CE3K the concept of communication was explored through universal physical consistencies: light, sound, movement. Writing Arabic letters on a baby white board with a marker pen would be meaningless to an alien, just as someone writing Chinese letters would not be understood by another human that doesn't speak the language. It is also expected that the aliens presumably aren't confused by the fact that the UFOs in China/Russia etc will be seeing different alphabets. For Louise to assume the aliens have names just because they squirt when she says "Louise" or "Ian" is laughable for the USA's best linguist. Humanity's first experience of superior intelligent life is handled entirely by the military in a field in Montana. In CE3K, the military were present - only to keep the public away - the bosses were the government civilian project team as it should, and would be. When the news announcer proclaims that China is going to attack the ships, and that Russia and Sudan are following suit, I nearly choked on my tea, Sudan! Sudan? Hmmm, let's see -which countries in the world don't we like right now? The use of political propaganda in these Hollywood movies is just too painful. Besides,... Sudan? Attacking a spaceship over 1500 ft tall with no knowledge of its defence/weapons systems? Has Sudan even got an army worth the name? How about South Sudan or Assad? The aliens want the humans help in 3000 years - yet they travelled to 2017 when we have no technology to even understand their request... and could possibly forget about it in 3000 years - that's if the aliens had even bothered to convey what that help might be!
etc...
Overall this movie was a shower...it knew what it wanted to say, but couldn't work out how to say it. Life imitating art in this case.