Three words: Read the book

Rating: 1/10 (28 January 2001)

Prime example of a book being squashed into a visual audience's attention span. Fair movie, but skip it and read the book. Carl Sagan's Contact is far and away one of the best modern-day science fiction tales skillfully written, but all of the gentle moments of character revelation are crammed into sound bytes to fit under 3 hours for Zemeckis's version. Plus you lose Carl Sagan's original description of a semi-solidly formed global society where past sins are forgiven, as gender- and nation-based dissimilarities can be overlooked as the earth moves on.