Overrated. Theme similar to Contact.

Rating: 5/10 (22 February 2017)

This movie was more about the central human character & her life as it was for the key character in the film Contact. The first 5 minutes were terrible & boring & made no sense to the audience until the end. The movie should have started with the nearly empty classroom scene & placed the first 5 minutes farther into the film. The beginning of any film or novel should grip the attention of the audience or reader. This Director clearly failed to attend basic Directing 101 class.
However, the key characters interaction with the aliens & overcoming the language barrier was quite unique & would appeal to a non scifi audience.
The space crafts were so bizarrely oriented & crude interiors that they bordered on absurd. The premise that the aliens were here just for the topic of the future life of the key human character & her premonition skills was ridiculous. As was the insane notion that they would send 12 ships to earth just to chat about the future life & premonition skills of the female language expert or just to relay the message they would be back in 3000 years.
This is the third scifi film which has wasted a unique alien plot & effects by focusing on the life of the key human. This one inserts scenes from her future life without any prelude depiction of what was going on. They were irritating interruptions. Almost nothing was revealed about the aliens even after she broke the language barrier. She did not even accomplish the minimum of her intended job duties with the aliens. You would also think they would have studied one of our languages before visiting us. The military's lack of site control & security measures was truly unrealistic from reality.
Nor did anyone seem to comprehend the aliens had saved her life when a group of soldiers went off the range to kill the aliens. Nor did she thank them. One alien was dying as a result.
The music, sounds & background vocalizations are absolutely horrible. It sounds like someone killing a cow. This is the worst I have ever heard on any film ever. It is quite distracting & quite awful. I can't imagine what they were thinking.
The heavy breathing & her overacting when they first entered the craft was really annoying. Her constant near fainting was also way overdone as were her habitual hesitations to every question & task. All I could think at those scenes was coward & the military should have replaced her. Especially with her obsession with one word such as human, instead of moving on to something else. The choice of words was also quite bizarre. It didn't demonstrate her supposed language skills. She also should have had pictures such as the earth & galaxy & other pertinent subjects to identify. Their progress was also way too slow.
Too many missed opportunities wasted on the key character's personal life which was the central plot in conjunction with her language skills. The language barrier story was unique & interesting to watch although her choice of words to teach the aliens were less than preferable. But her personal life should have been jettisoned from the film entirely & replaced with details about the aliens, their home & intentions.
IRL; We need to get off these narcissistic ideas that we are great & the center of importance in the universe or the idea that aliens have any interest in helping us. Their only interest is in collecting our water resources, plant & animal life, ores & minerals and using us for laborers or experiments. They are not here to save us so we need to stop deluding ourselves with false impressions of our own importance. We cant even get along with other countries or have a common language with our neighbors. We are in for a rude awakening when we discover just how unimportant & chaotic our planet's divided population truly is in the universe.
This movie reminds me of the art critics who rave accolades over a pile of garbage like made by Homer Simpson and destroy excellent movies like Oblivion. Non science fiction fans or critics or awards should not be judging scifi films. Nor should studios get involved with film titles & details like they did with Robinson Crusoe on Mars. An excellent realistic film forced to carry a bad title & no marketing promotion.
The language barrier theme is good enough to hold your attention so the movie is watchable without violence or battles but lacks any technology or special effects, even on the space crafts. Basically an egg shaped rock with a square tunnel drilled lengthwise & nothing else inside or outside which sits ungainly on the end. The aliens are each a giant Octopus missing one leg. Non scifi fans will like it better than true scifi fans. Anyone who needs battles, violence, special effects, technology & terror to gratify themselves need not bother to watch this film. There is none. It is a lot like the film Contact which focused on the human characters life.