Interesting Premise, Badly Executed

Rating: 4/10 (6 December 2016)

All of the reviews I'd read of this were good (although I hadn't yet checked IMDb) so I had high hopes for this movie. Maybe that was my first mistake.
I can't complain about any of the acting. All of the actors, including Adams and Renner, did good job with what the were given. It really felt like they bought into the story.
My problem was the story itself, and the way it was told.
Aliens come to Earth in 12 different ships, hovering over apparently random points. So far, so good. The 12 countries involved in the landings (or hoverings, I guess) send out people to communicate with the aliens. Amy Adams plays the American linguist sent to communicate with them. A good deal of the movie is spent trying to determine the aliens' purpose for coming to Earth (as you might expect).
Here's where we get into spoiler territory:
The aliens' purpose in coming to Earth is to teach us their language, so that we can experience time in a non-linear way. The problem with this, from a movie point of view, is that the movie picks up after the main character gets this ability, rather than before (to the extent that "before" and "after" have any meaning, when you're talking about time being circular).
How does this affect the movie? Wel, for me, it felt like 75% of the movie was Groundhog Day, just watching the same things happen over and over for no reason. When the reason for this is finally revealed at the end, it's interesting, but not interesting enough to justify sitting through it.
Beside the narrative structure, there are plot problems. Why do the aliens send 12 ships, with the message in 12 parts? Can't the aliens just send one ship, and send out the message in one piece? If the point of the contact is to allow us to see time in a circular way, what purpose does sending out the message in pieces serve? And if the aliens can see the future as easily as the past, wouldn't they *know* the problems that approach would have? And finally, how does learning a written language get you to experience time differently? That doesn't make a lot of sense. And why does only Amy Adams' character get the ability at first, when they've all been learning together?
It's an interesting movie at first blush, but it doesn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny.