When science and religion make contact...

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2001)

If you want to see a sci-fi film with lots of neon lasers, putty alien make-up, and `ooohh-ahhhhh' space-age acrobatics, do not rent Contact. However, if you want to be enriched with a sci-fi movie that will give your mind a healthy mental backflip, rent it and enjoy. The film exercises the fundamental reality of alien contact, not just the fundamental entertainment value of it. It knows that half the audience will see this movie and blame it for not having enough `special effects.' Whereas the other half of the audience will realize the special effects of this movie lie not within the visuals, but within the screenplay, the acting, and the brilliant unbiased dialogue surrounding the ongoing battle of science and religion. Not even the most lavishly executed fight sequence could come close to the amount of kick that some of this dialogue delivers in proving science and religion are one in the same. The screenwriters never take sides, and leave the doors cracked open just enough to not make the words preachy. If you like a film that titillates the mind with questions that zap mental photons rather than visual ones, rent contact and let the realness and brilliance of the movie take you to another universe..