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Contact (1997)

tomatometer

42

Average Rating: 6.2/10
Critic Reviews: 19
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 11

No consensus yet.

audience

74

liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 180,180

My Rating

Movie Info

The search for life outside our solar system becomes a personal and spiritual quest for a young researcher. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) is a scientist who lost her faith in God after her parents died when she was a child. However, Ellie has learned to develop a different sort of faith in the seemingly unknowable: working with a group that monitors radio waves from space, Ellie hopes that some day she will receive a coherent message from another world that will prove that there is a world beyond

Dec 16, 1997

Warner Home Video

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All Critics (62) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (23) | DVD (23)

Something like one of those mysterious asteroids that get the astronomers all worked up: a large body of gaseous matter surrounding a relatively small core of solid substance.

February 16, 2011 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine
TIME Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

When it's good, it's very good. And when it's not, it can be as silly and self-important as a bad '50s sci-fi movie.

February 16, 2011 Full Review Source: Newsweek
Newsweek
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Like Jodie Foster's hopeful space voyager in the picture, "Contact" may not travel quite as far as it hopes to go, but the trip is worth taking nonetheless.

March 26, 2009 Full Review Source: Variety
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Begins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.

June 9, 2007 Full Review Source: Washington Post
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Contact takes forever to lift off.

June 8, 2007 Full Review Source: Washington Post
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Features heavy-handed exposition, repetitive, maudlin flashbacks, uneven performances and endless sermonising.

June 24, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out
Time Out
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Thoughtful adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel.

December 22, 2010 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media

Uma ficção científica que confere peso semelhante aos dois termos do gênero: se sua narrativa ficcional é intrigante e bem desenvolvida, sua ciência jamais se entrega ao implausível.

July 31, 2010 Full Review Source: Cinema em Cena
Cinema em Cena

...one of the best pure science-fiction films since 2001.

October 6, 2009 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis | Comments (7)
Movie Metropolis

No wonder the astronomer's philosophy of contact boils down to this: Don't call me, I'll call you.

August 20, 2009 Full Review Source: City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul

With all the science and technology, Zemeckis and the writers made room for spiritual debates (some of them painfully slight), political commentary, and a strangely tepid and inert romance...

January 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Turner Classic Movies Online
Turner Classic Movies Online

Magical, captivating entertainment.

October 13, 2007 Full Review Source: TheMovieReport.com
TheMovieReport.com

When Contact finally comes alive, it leaves you frightened and thrilled and emotionally overwrought, as only a child can be. The rest is pandering.

June 8, 2007 Full Review Source: Slate
Slate

The result is a film far too cold-blooded for summer audiences.

June 8, 2007 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Foster's voyage is an astronomical letdown, largely because Zemeckis' ideas of heaven and earth don't extend beyond what can be envisioned as a celluloid event.

November 4, 2005 Full Review Source: Boulder Weekly

It is a good sci-fi yarn.

April 9, 2005 Full Review Source: Reeling Reviews
Reeling Reviews

By hating the two-dimensional villain ... the audience feels they have found 'the bad guy' and aren't challenged to consider the flimsiness in Arroway's or Josse's perspectives.

December 6, 2004
Looking Closer

The story doesn't always do justice to the mind-bending visual opening of Robert Zemeckis' movie, which features Jodie Foster as an annoyingly intense scientist.

June 28, 2004 Full Review Source: Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

Gran, gran película, una de esas que merecería más páginas...

January 12, 2004 Full Review Source: Cinenganos
Cinenganos

Even the computer generated graphics are a bad fit.

May 14, 2003
Palo Alto Weekly

Audience Reviews for Contact

One of the best works of director Robert Zemeckis and easily the greates sci-fi film made in 90's. Zemeckis has not only made a deeply philosophical film about science versus religion, but he also has managed to inject massive doses of emotion and heart into his film.
These characters in the film are people which feel real and characters we care about. Contact has a great cast and Jodie Foster especially is in a role of a lifetime here. Her Ellie Arroway is the film's beating heart and she is our vessel through this amazing journey which Zemeckis takes us. Matthew McConaughey is also very good as a religious Palmer Joss and Tom Skerrit is deliciously slimy as a selfish Drumlin. There are also very beautiful and tender moments between younger Ellie and her father. Jena Malone as a Ellie and David Morse as her father share some of the film's most magical and heartbreaking moments.
It is rare to see films like Contact these days. I admire the ideas of Carl Sagan which this film is based on. There are so much information and so many interesting theories about our existence in this universe. Zemeckis is not even trying to give any easy solutions or answers here. Contact is a film to make you think. I guess that it's biggest strenght is it's richness to be equally philosophical, heartfelt and full of awe at the same time. Here is a film which has a power of greatest film magic imaginable.
Zemeckis is close cousin to Steven Spielberg when it comes to filmmaking. They both share same kind of approach to their material. They both are directors with great vision and talent, but they also has advantage of making their characters feel alive.
What makes Contact so great as a film is the fact that it has so big heart. Here is one of the greatest emotionally charged sci-fi advetures that cinema has ever witnessed. Contact is up there with the best of it's genre. This film is simply unforgettable experience and a must see for anyone who loves cinema.
January 7, 2012
emilkakko

Super Reviewer

Robert Zemekis and Jodie Foster take on Carl (who died before the film was finished) Sagan's optimistic speculation on what the first alien (as in: from space not Uzbekistan) contact might be like. Interestingly the hypothesis goes (like in K-Pax) to thought being the fastest way to travel. Science geeks everywhere will sumptuously bathe in the obligatory sense of awe and wonder. Billions and billions of stars.
July 21, 2007
UniversalDreamer

Super Reviewer

    1. S.R. Hadden: [over video feed from Mir space station] I wanna show you something. [shows satellite feed to Ellie] Hokkaido Island.
    2. Ellie Arroway: The systems integration site.
    3. S.R. Hadden: Look closer. [zooms satellite feed to reveal second machine] First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price? Only, this one can be kept secret. Controlled by Americans, built by the Japanese subcontractors. Who, also, happen to be, recently acquired, wholly-owned subsidiaries...
    4. Ellie Arroway: [speaks with Hadden] ... of Hadden industries.
    5. S.R. Hadden: They still want an American to go, Doctor. Wanna take a ride?
    – Submitted by Francis L (14 months ago)
    1. S.R. Hadden: [to Arroway in the tone of Hannibal Lecter] Clever girl.
    – Submitted by Francis L (14 months ago)
    1. Kent: Dr. Arroway will be spending her precious telescope time listening for... uh... listening for...
    2. Ellie Arroway: Little green men.
    – Submitted by Francis L (14 months ago)
    1. Palmer Joss: You could call me a man of the cloth, without the cloth.
    – Submitted by R.I. M (22 months ago)
    1. Young Ellie: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?
    2. Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.
    – Submitted by R.I. M (22 months ago)

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