Nice sci-fi but director tries to force misplaced sentiments through your throat

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2013)

I'm kind of sciencefiction fanatic but for some reason Contact never attracted me. But after hearing some OK stories I decided to view it after all this time it was released.
Beforehand I knew it was about mankind making contact with an alien source and the whole builtup to that happening was executed very good. The whole deciphering part of the signal felt a bit like an Indiana Jones adventure. Very smart writing.
What I didn't like at all was that I felt the director was trying to please both the church goers and scientists. I got no clue at all why a huge chunk of the story was reserved for a science vs religion debate. What was the point? And to please the atheists/scientist a fundamental Christian terrorist was thrown in. Like he wanted to say "hey you can't blame me that I must be sponsored by the church! I wrote a Christian terrorist in the story!" It all felt really misplaced for me. Like a scene from a different movie. They could have written out the whole Matthew McConaughey part and it would be a better movie. His role was just stupid.
For a scifi geek the whole building of the wormhole-portal machine was just great. And it got even better when the whole travelling part began. After watching the intro of the movie where we saw the planet Earth zooming out to our Galaxy, then clusters and then the whole Universe I was hoping that something would happen again and it did. With wormhole travelling. It really felt like a roller-coaster ride.
The actual arrival on the alien planet felt a bit disappointing. The alien who dressed up as her dad was lame. Maybe it was original then but I just wanted to see the imagination of what an alien lifeform would look like according to the director. So that was disappointing.
So if the story would be all about Jody Fosters ambition without the pointless religion crap and the love affair with Matthew McConaughey I would have given it an 8 probably. Now a 6 but still a good watch.