A surprise on the DVD

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2005)

This is a clearly a high-prestige sort of sci-fi movie, what with Carl Sagan's name attached, and no doubt a large budget. Frankly, I was disappointed; I found it very talky, more pretentious than profound (as if, for a largely science-fiction-fan audience, there's anything daring or even controversial in the notion of funding scientific research and reaching out to possible extraterrestrial life!), freighted with a truly awful, unwatchable performance by Matthew McConaughey (with his accent, popping eyes, and bared teeth, he seems to be doing a bad impression of William F. Buckley, Jr.), and featuring only two action scenes, one of them genuinely gripping, the other so-so. // What interested me more than the film itself was listening to two of the three commentaries included on the DVD. The one by director Robert Zemeckis addressed itself almost entirely to the complicated and expensive special effects that seem a component of just about every scene; it's an initially interesting subject that eventually grows tedious and rather dry. Conversely, the voice-over commentary by Jodie Foster shows that this intelligent actress and filmmaker is even brainier, more thoughtful, and more articulate than I'd imagined. Her performance in the commentary is, in fact, even more impressive and gratifying than her performance on screen.