Contact "Touches" Greatness

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2012)

This potentially remarkable film falls just short of the cosmic realm to which it aspires, but it does frequently soar to dizzying heights. Unfotunately, it's occasionally pulled back down to less rarefied atmospheres under the weight of its overwrought, clunky romantic malfunctions. Jody Foster's character's atheism may be used against her to deny her the opportunity to fulfill a lifetime dream, and her attraction to the man responsible for this possible denial is played for all it's melodramatic, soap opera worth.
And Jodie Foster - a consummate pro whose career credits are the envy of any working actor - is here just so relentlessly earnest and strident, and as focused as a cobra poised to strike. It's a bit of a one note performance, and maybe a little tiring. She does, of course, posses a wonderfully photogenic face which we are invited to scrutinize at great length in the countless increasingly tight close ups of her tense square jaw and piecing baby blue eyes.
The special effects are a bit sketchy by today's astronomically high standards, but 15 years ago I imagine audience's were sufficiently impressed. The most glaring weakness are the matte painting backgrounds upon which has been place a considerable responsibility to generate awe and wonder, but their unnatural cartooniness is distracting. Most of the other digital effects are executed sufficiently well enough to serve the increasingly exciting action.
The effects, and in fact the entire film very effectively plays off our collective memory of other classic landmark Sci-Fi films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, and even The Andromeda Strain with its terse and clinical scientific dialog executed with icy cold precision. These three films are certainly very fine company to be keeping and Contact earns its position by virtue of the challenging and unique questions raised by its intelligent script. It might come off as self important and smug of me to be nit picking this film, but my petty criticisms can be read as a testament to the high standard to which Contact strives and largely achieves.