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Contact
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 16 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Mystery | Sci-fi
Written by:
James V. Hart
Michael Goldenberg
Carl Sagan (story and novel)
Ann Druyan (story)
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 11, 1997
DVD: February 3, 2004
Running Time: 153 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG for some intense action, mild language and a scene of sensuality
Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt, Jena Malone, David Morse, William Fichtner, and Tom Skerritt
Jodie Foster stars as headstrong visionary astronomer Ellie Arroway in Contact, a drama of discovery, based on the best-selling 1985 novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and noted astronomer Carl Sagan. (Warner Bros.)
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
ReelViews James Berardinelli
Contact is that rare big-budget motion picture that places ideas, characters, and plot above everything else.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Contact is superior popular filmmaking, both polished and effective. But despite its success and its serious intentions, it's finally a movie where the storytelling makes more of an impact than the story.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Sagan's novel Contact provides the inspiration for Robert Zemeckis' new film, which tells the smartest and most absorbing story about extraterrestrial intelligence since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
If you sign on, disarmed of irony, for her trip -- I did -- you'll be rewarded with a rare thing that may in itself prove the existence of a Higher Power: a Hollywood entertainment that makes you consider deep thoughts.
Read Full Review >Empire Neil Jeffries
Contact delivers on more than a pure visual level, reiterating the idea that greatest progress is made taking "small steps" towards enlightenment.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Its discussions don't go very deep, and moviegoers with strong religious values may wonder why it comes down for humanism over spirituality.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
The movie, adapted from a novel by Carl Sagan, presents one long chain of teasingly open-ended questions about reason versus faith and technology versus religion, and ends up tentatively embracing mysticism over rationality.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Robin Dougherty
Faithful to Sagan's brand of popularized science, the film never reaches beyond Hollywood spectacle and sentimentality.
Read Full Review >Slate Sarah Kerr
When Contact finally comes alive, it leaves you frightened and thrilled and emotionally overwrought, as only a child can be. The rest is pandering.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Beautifully crafted and legitimately involving once it locks onto a dramatic track, film benefits from remaining mysterious about how far it intends to go in pursuing its themes, but also suffers from long-windedness and preachy final-reel explicitness as to its message.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Contact is so burdened with social, political, and religious issues that they infect and ultimately overwhelm much of the philosophical content.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Russell Smith
Little effort is made to churn up romantic chemistry between Foster and McConaughey. For better or worse, director Robert Zemeckis sticks to Sagan's original vision for these characters, in which they're basically totems embodying both sides of a philosophical dialectic.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Robert Zemeckis's movie is frustratingly uneven. When it's good, it's very good. And when it's not, it can be as silly and self-important as bad '50s sci-fi.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
What's most frustrating about the movie isn't that it thinks so little of its heroine that it can't let her figure out the moral of her own story, but that it thinks so little of us as to suggest that, after a couple millennia of human struggle, it's indeed possible to answer the unanswerable.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
This film is no exception to the rule that philosophical debate seldom spawns compelling cinema.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
The best moments occur when -- as in reality -- we're still in the dark. As soon as the movie gets to its version of a punch line, it turns into another Hollywood vehicle spinning aimlessly in space.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Peter Rainer
Contact sure is pretentious. It doesn't deliver on the deepthink, and it lacks the charge of good, honest pulp. It's schlock without the schlock.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis, may be too long, too self-important and too "Gump"-like to be completely satisfying. But it contains elements that are so striking they pretty much redeem the film.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser
This bloated, self-important and logically absurd movie, made by the director of the equally historically hysterical "Forrest Gump," pretends to the thrones of Serious Thinking, of Important Messages and of Intellectual Provocation. If there were truly anything serious, important or intellectual about this movie, this planet would be in big trouble.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Contact aims to be a film of ideas but serves too many of them half-baked.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
There's a big budget, big cast and big themes about religion, science and life on other planets. But Contact, which aims for awe, ends up with piffle.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
In some ways, Contact is just like the universe: big, star-bright and seemingly endless. Not to mention that it begins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Brent P. gave it a10:
This is my favorite film because it looks at the encounter with extra-terrestrial life in a totally fresh way. It's much more realistic and much more intelligent than most sci-fi films. It is truly a sci-fi drama that is emotionally moving yet cerebral.
Jason R gave it a10:
I agree with Moo P. 100%. Contact doesn't feel like a sci fi film at all. It feels like a drama that happens to involve space travel. Why this film isn't more popular is a bit of a mystery to me. One of my favorite films. Excellent story, excellent acting, superb atmosphere, sound and special effects in aiding the story, not showing off or drawing attention to itself. A rare film.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
A scientist's vision the reconciles two seemingly irreconcilable philosophies of life: science and religion. The two forces clash throughout the world as humans are faced with the possibility of contact with sentient extraterrestrial life.
Steve P. gave it a10:
Contact was great. To those who said it was not so good you are wrong. Jodie was great in the film even though she did overact a bit.
Dede S. gave it a10:
I love this movie very much, watched Jodie Foster as astronomer. SHe very strong and active, as strong her acting. Bravo Jodie.
Rita P. gave it a2:
This film robbed me of more than 2 hours of my life, its a sin I cannot forgive.
Moo P. gave it a10:
I am amazed at how many critics got this movie so wrong. To be sure, the movie had the ambitious task of condensing Sagan's intelligent and realistic novel of the interplay of science, religion, and politics into bite-sized morsel. But it does so very effectively, without being pandering, self-important, or pretentious. The movie sets out some clear questions and lets the viewer take away what they want from the accessible dialogue and the somewhat ambigous events at the end. Lost on most critics is something that makes the movie (and the novel) almost unqiue in the realm of Sci-F: it is one of the most realistic and in-depth portrayals of a scientist and how science intersects with the 'real world'. The character of Ellie is one of my favorites of all time. She is also an excellent role model for girls at a time when women are still underrepresented in the sciences. I give Sagans' book my highest recommendation, and this movie the highest score for doing such an effective job in conveying many of the book's ideas while maintaining an intriguing storyline.
