Falling Short in the Imagination Department

Rating: 6/10 (19 June 1999)

Contact is loaded with scenes of a heroine, an astronomer played by Jodi Foster, fighting against great odds for the "truth" that some alien civilization is just itching to communicate with us. Foster's character is so perfect, she is revered like a priestess. There is little else in Contact that is explored in depth much beyond this holy quest of the Foster character.
Besides being too perfect, I say the Foster character is holy because the rest of the world in this film is filled with spiteful, small minded and just weird people. Rival scientists lack vision. Government officials are penny pinching liars who go from disbelief to let's nuke the aliens. Religious leaders want to suppress the truth. And the general public? The public at large are portrayed as a mass of howling primates who blindly flock from one big event to another. In this mass of humanity religious followers from New Age to traditional get to be trashed in broad strokes as mindless fools singing and dancing in some trance. Finally, Contact claims there are super rich folks living in airplanes flying around the world or in outer space just waiting to meet alien species.
With all of these extreme stereotyped characters and the circus atmosphere, I am reminded of a satire such as Mars Attacks or a tongue in cheek sci-fi disaster yarn like Independence Day. But Contact wants to be taken seriously. This is Carl Sagan's story after all.
Well, the film briefly tries to create a meaningful relationship for Foster with the character played by Matthew MacConaughey. But soon MacConaughey's role also becomes paper thin as he becomes the comforter to the persecuted Jodi who is like Joan of Arc on trial.
All of this would be forgivable if there was a serious consideration of what our involvement with an alien species would mean. Excellent films that deal with this topic include 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Here is where Contact falls flat. In an overly explained series of scenes mirroring 2001 Foster sort of meets an alien then quickly returns to earth. Foster's experience is like a dream. Who are the aliens and what would contact with them mean to us? The movie doesn't go there. There is a vacuum of ideas here as empty as space. The story simply goes back to Foster being the persecuted noble scientist.
Out of all of this, the final message of Contact is that fundamental scientific research, that has little immediate practical value, requires faith. It is like a religious philosophy in a way with one difference being that we are supposed to fund it with tax dollars. Considering all of this, there is very little I can say in praise of the movie besides that Foster's acting is good as always and that technically the film is well made.
The whole movie felt like a fund drive on public television, "give money to the poor scientists". If Contact is one big ad for astronomy research at least make alien contact more interesting. And finally, to create a noble character you do not have to belittle the rest of the world.