Despite its lineage and some impressive special effects, Contact is a disappointingly earthbound production, weighed down by the ballast of talking-heads dramaturgy and bloated storytelling.

| Jul 18, 2018

If Contact is disappointingly soft in the head, it can also enthrall. Zemeckis is such a potent imagemaker that he is capable, for long stretches at a time, of sweeping you up in his vision.

| Feb 28, 2018

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 7, 2011

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.

| Feb 16, 2011

Thoughtful adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 22, 2010

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.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

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

| Jun 9, 2007

Contact takes forever to lift off.

| Jun 8, 2007

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

| Jun 8, 2007

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

| Jun 24, 2006

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 18, 2002

Contact, which aims for awe, ends up with piffle.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 12, 2002

An exhilarating adventure.

Full Review | May 11, 2001

If [Sagan] does a better job of asking them than answering them, that is at least consistent with the scientists creed that the only sin is to be afraid to ask the right questions -- and to be open-minded about the answers.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jan 1, 2000

For an aspiring ultimate trip, Contact has a flimsy dramatic grip.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

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 | Jan 1, 2000

After almost two-and-a-half hours of tantalizing buildup, the closing scenes' meager payoff of banal, Jack Handeyish hoo-haw creates a frustrating sense of intellectual coitus interruptus.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

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.

| Jan 1, 2000

Faithful to Sagan's brand of popularized science, the film never reaches beyond Hollywood spectacle and sentimentality.

| Jan 1, 2000

Zemeckis uses special effects to suggest the climactic events without upstaging them.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000