White Noise

Rating: 4/10 (4 January 2011)

Before I review this film, I am going to say this. If you haven't seen this film - don't. Track down Disney's 80s made-for-cable "Flight of the Navigator" and be happy with a bowl of popcorn on a Saturday night. But if you must...
Contact is a difficult film to review. Based on Carl Sagan's serenade novel to the stars, the ambitious, and occasionally moving, story of Ellie Arroway taps into the romance of stargazing but fails to explore the larger implications of the Pandoras Box it opens. Like a black sheep family member, I really can't hate this film, but it is also so difficult to love it.
In many ways Contact is a concept film - a "what if" statement on a slice of Kubrick's 2001: A Spacey Odyssey. "What if" somebody made an entire film on somebody discovering the monolith from 2001? "What if" the monolith and signal is a radio transmission telling us how to construct an advanced piece of technology? "What if" we ditch the stark soundtrack of deep breathing sounds and add pulsing radio transmissions, romance and a sad story of a little girl losing her dad? This is the movie Contact is. On paper, it all sounds so interesting, but somehow it all goes very wrong.
Jodie Foster invests heavily in Ellie and so does the audience. She is stubborn, driven and also charismatic. What I am not persuaded by is the script's tacky father-daughter story laced so sloppily into the plot. What I feel, is there is a greater story to be mined here, but the father- daughter angle rings hollow. John Hurt is wasted as a Yoda inspired bald genius and every other character in the film seems recycled from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest institution staff. There are too many villains and the only supporting character with more than one dimension is Matthew McConaughey. This is one of those movies where everybody is crazy and evil but Ellie. Everybody knows better than Ellie - they know so much better, they do everything she says and in the end, still make her think she is crazy. It is one of those movies where you are continually frustrated by the contrived characterizations and idiocy of the writing than engaging into the story. Yes it is one of those movies.
The film is based largely on the idea and euphoria of discovery, but the film offers so little of it. Director Robert Zemeckis tries desperately to resolve questions about aliens and religion within the social conscious, but instead we are given long lectures, congressional testimonials and emotional schlock more fitting to the Young and the Restless. Like a bad episode to the TV series LOST, there are many exciting ideas in Contact but they end up flushed by filmmakers and writers who are afraid to take on these ideas, or even any of Carl Sagan's ingenuity or conjectures from the novel, with any seriousness or dedication. The filmmakers take the easy way out and play out melodrama instead of insight. The novel's intricate plot is ditched for a "are you kidding me?" laugh-out-loud "alien" beach rendezvous and intelligent writing is ditched in favor of teary-eyed soliloquy to tug at your heart strings. The search for intelligent life in movies continues.
The finality doesn't do justice to Ellie Arroway any of the deep ideas proposed by the plot or ultimately to the intelligence of the audience. There is, however, one brief redemption. There is a moment in the film where Ellie is lying in the Plains of San Augustin under the VLA telescope listening to static. This is when the first pulse of the alien signal hits. Ellie's eyes grow large and so do ours. It is an incredible epoch. It is the only moment in the two and a half hour film where Contact actually makes some.