Contact Reviews
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.
Newsweek
Top CriticWhen 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.
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.
Washington Post
Top CriticBegins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.
Time Out
Top CriticFeatures heavy-handed exposition, repetitive, maudlin flashbacks, uneven performances and endless sermonising.
When it tries to personify the struggle between skepticism and faith in the relationship between Ellie and her theologian boyfriend, it becomes flat and obvious.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
While the movie doesn't qualify as an awful waste of space by any means, it has so many creative black holes, you'll have to weigh the entertainment odds before making this journey.
Contact is at its most relaxed when it sheds its intellectual pretensions and reveals its media-wise sense of humor.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Zemeckis uses special effects to suggest the climactic events without upstaging them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The movie's CNN strategy, whereby credibility is measured in TV exposure, proves fatal, often throwing the proceedings into a laughable tailspin.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
For an aspiring ultimate trip, Contact has a flimsy dramatic grip.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Faithful to Sagan's brand of popularized science, the film never reaches beyond Hollywood spectacle and sentimentality.
This is the kind of motion picture that restores one's faith in what can be produced when a large budget is used wisely.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
