Awful, awful, awful...

Rating: 1/10 (13 March 2000)

I'm always shocked to read so many good reviews of Contact, particularly among people claiming to be SF fans. This movie was one of the worst SF movies ever made. It really should have had Peter Graves in it just for the theme. It was Carl Sagen telling us that we are stupid and he is not. I found myself wanting to yell at the screen during the movie many times when the entire planet's field of experts could not seem to figure out something that was so obvious to me.
The "religious" elements of the story were just plain dumb. Does anyone recall there being a belief test for astronauts before? What was really amazing was that this religious extremism on the part of the government was supposed to be happening during the Clinton administration. There was not one believable character in the government plot.
There was no hint of scientific method. The science was just plain bad.
I'm reminded of many Star Trek episodes where someone says they heard voices or saw a vision. The are immediately discounted as having stress problems or some other mental problem. This on a ship where this type of stuff happens all the time. This movie does this as well. It protrays the entire world as not willing to pay any attention to what someone says when it's unexpected. What did they expect?
I could go on and on and about Contact. It's just so amazing to me that so many people turned off their brains and went into dreamland while watching it. It's a seriously bad movie.