Plottish, but Really Uneven

Rating: 6/10 (24 February 2008)

I'm sure I will be dissed harshly by the fans of this drivel. So be it. I expected a lot better. A LOT better.
In what is evidently meant (at least at times) to be a philosophical examination of a more or less anthropomorphic concept of God wrapped in a mildly intriguing entertainment, "Contact" is so mundane it's laughable. The script is pedantic; something rather like an imaginative British TV miniseries, but from the '70s or '80s rather than the '90s.
Like so many science fiction films of the '70s and '80s, the actors' interpersonal interplay is both phony and telegraphic, though the plot offers a nifty shock here and there. But, even though it takes a poke at the Red State hyper-religiosity that elected Junior and his cronies, this is not Ready for Prime Time.
It could have been sooooooo much better. Contact could have taken the kind of a look at "God" that many of the great philosophers of the last hundred years have taken. (Well. Why not if that's what you're going to do in a film?) We could have looked at the "God" Einstein, Fermi, von Neuman and others found in quantum physics. Or it could have at least made mention of Poincare, Lorenz and Gleick and their God of "Good Orderly Direction" in "chaos theory." Or even at just the Eastern world's notions of "God" as something beyond our infantile, Western insistence upon society-organizing parentalism.
In whatever event, the pacing is plodding most of the way. Some of this could have been dealt with by means of tighter editing, but like Sagan's own ponderous television series, the script is simply too "wonderous." (Although that's probably just fine with Sagan fans.)
There's just waaaaay too much fascination with technology, as well as that sort of schizoid, emotionally clueless and oddly disconnected take on human intimacy that informed films of this kind in the '50s and '60s. What is -presented- as dramatic is simply not, until the special effects guys get a hold of a scene. And even then it's more like Roland Emerich's work on "Independence Day."
Spielberg this is not. Nor is it Kubrick. H**l, it's not even Fred Wilcox and "Forbidden Planet." There is no real message or drama here. There's no magic, either.