"If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space"

Rating: 9/10 (7 November 1999)

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
The contact frequency is pi times hydrogen, and the first transmission is the prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7.... This is what WE would transmit and do transmit because such signals cannot be mistaken for natural phenomena. It's obvious that what we have here is intelligent science fiction. The general public may be surprised to learn-I know I was-that a significant segment of the scientific community considers the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) a pie in the sky waste of money and human energy. The prejudice is so great that until recently no self- respecting astrophysicist would dare specialize in it for fear of having no career. Well, there are a few brave souls. This is a movie about one of them.
I didn't read the book-shame on me, but works of fiction by scientists usually make me blush in embarrassment for their authors. But Carl Sagan was no ordinary scientist, nor was he an ordinary writer. Still I suspect that what made this an excellent movie was the script by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg. It is extraordinarily well thought out and carefully crafted with deft turns of plot and a satisfying conclusion, with no need for spaghetti code patches near the end, the bane of most sci-fi and action/adventure flicks. It is also emotionally moving.
There is, however, just the slightest "written by committee" feel to the movie. Everything is a little too neat and too well explained. It's a paradox of any art form that sometimes you can polish too much, you can overwrite and lose some spontaneity in the production. And yes, Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) is a little too good to be true, and Arroway (Jodie Foster) really needs a serious fault or at least some kind of vice to round her out. Being a political innocent isn't enough. And the media and governmental reaction is a little too pat and cynical.
However all of that is insignificant compared with the most difficult thing about writing a futuristic or "superior civilization" story, namely coming up some unknown technology or information to make it seem real. The formula for cold fusion would work, or the cure to cancer. But how can you do THAT?
You can't (otherwise what you come up with would probably be more important than your script.) It is fascinating to see how Sagan, Hart, Goldenberg and Director Robert Zemeckis cleverly sidestep this pitfall. Only those who have tried it can know what a fine job was done here. And incidentally Zemeckis can be given credit for making "Contact" intelligible without any dumbing down, no mean feat in itself.
As far as star Jodie Foster goes, it's clear she inhaled and imbibed the persona of the modern woman of science in preparation for this role, so well does she play the part of astrophysicist Ellie Arroway. They have her come out looking androgynous, which is appropriate for two reasons, one, she lost her mother early and had to identify with her father more than most (an explanation, if one were needed, for how she became a scientist); and two, those little green beings aren't going to be men or women, having given up our sort of primitive sexuality long ago. She is never glamorized; even when she dresses up, she still looks like a normal woman in a gown. And she is appropriately unpolitical and naive and far too honest in front of the camera, something the real Jodie Foster is not.
Best line: "It's so beautiful. They should have sent a poet."