For the most part, I agree with abettertomorrow, but...

Rating: Null/10 (6 January 2002)

In the main, I agree with abettertomorrow's remarks about Contact (q.v.), with the stipulation that the journey sequence was wholly plagiarized from 2001 - substitute the Machine for the second Monolith, Ellie Arroway for Dave Bowman, the Pensacola beach for the enigmatic hotel room, and meeting Dad for Bowman meeting himself - just the eye candy was different. Of course, the same could be said for Stargate - once the idea of wormhole travel gets put on film, there's only so many ways it can be made to look different. What separates Clarke & Kubrick from Sagan & Zemeckis is the lead-in, but what the former relegated to the background in a time of Cold War tensions, the latter brought to the fore. This all proves once again that there are no new stories, just old ones told in new ways.