True Science Fiction again at last

Rating: Null/10 (5 January 2000)

If you feed on junk for long enough, you will get used to it. Eventually you will get hooked on it.
The recent Science fiction releases from Hollywood have been intensely disappointing for real sci-fi buffs but have at the same time been huge box office hits. I enjoyed The Matrix and Independence day from an entertainment point of view, but as far as sci-fi goes these movies were thought provoking for the brain-dead only.
Contact is boring only if you are entertained by non-stop special effects, slo-mo and stop action shots, lasers, phasers, warp drives, shields and planet pulping torpedos, weird ugly aliens, 'end of the world', 'alien take-over' and other cliche'd scenarios, gargantuan spaceships, robots, androids, humanoids, artificial intelligence graphically produced for those with a seemingly definite lack of intelligence and imagination.
Contact provides the most likely scenario of a contact with an alien civilisation. Via radio telescopes, unfortunately that does not leave much room for graphic depiction. But yet it is handled in a thought provoking way whether you agree with the way the situation unfolds or not.
Special effects were shown only when needed and in a controlled way. Ellies journey and the simulated blue watered beach set against a star filled sky was simply beautiful. I for one wish that there was such a place in reality. And by the way for those of you who as usual switched your brains off during the movie, that is not an alien appearing as Ellies father, it is a simulation.
I am also amazed by the increasing number of American movie goers who find any thought provoking movie 'boring', and any movie hodge-podged and loaded with effects 'mind blowing and one of the best movies of all times'. A sad indication of the 'Jerry Springer' mindedness of Americans today.
For me 'Contact' is a science fiction classic. An excellent combination of the factual, and the imaginative. It has something for everyone whether you are an Aetheist, a Scientist, a Skeptic, a Religious person, a combination or none of the above. It puts us, our planet, and our point in time into perspective. 'This is the way its been done for billions of years', Ellie is told. Makes you feel pretty humble when you realise that not only you, but the entire history of our planet has been in around for an insignificant period of time compared to the eons that our universe has been around.
It certainly made me think how far into space the broadcast of the Berlin Olympics has reached so far. It also scares me to think that one day aliens may pick up broadcasts of the 'Jerry Springer Show'.
Better than the book, Contact gets 9/10.