A bit of a disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2016)

Being a sci-fi fan, and having read some really interesting stories that speculate about the eventual problems involved in communicating with aliens, I expected to really enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, I ended up very disappointed for two things that really bothered me.
First, it is the use of the time paradox in a way that, to me, falls more in the realm of fantasy than proper science fiction. It is exactly the same formula they used in Interstellar, which, in my humble opinion, destroyed the educational potential of that movie. Is it that pure science fiction is too dull for the public that they have to add in some esoterism? Apparently, it is so. For me, a much more elegant and profound treatment of the idea of non linearity of time was presented by Robert Sawyer in his novel Flashforward.
Second, I think the story has a big flaw. Here we have this very advanced civilization that traveled from far away with a gift for humanity, which, apparently, will have to return the favor in 3,000 years into the future. So they have an elaborate - long term - plan. They (apparently) know our needs (unless they brought some useless alien souvenirs). They also know that we are not a unitary civilization so they split the gift into parts to make us collaborate (cliche). Given the latter, I would assume that they'd studied us a little and, likely, figured out some of the basics of human communication systems well before embarking in this journey. So why risk this entire operation by having the primitive humans make all the communication efforts? It seems that someone, either the aliens or the script writers, didn't give it a careful thought.