No Contact, but I wish I had made Contact...

Now it can be told...

I'm usually a pretty easy-going guy. I really really hate confrontation, especially with strangers, but there was one time at the movies when I so lost my cool that I not only yelled out loud, but I also almost chased down a total stranger to let him know exactly what I thought.

Contact, the movie based on Carl Sagan's book starring Jodie Foster, was coming out and it looked really good. In retrospect, I can now safely say that it's one of the most self-indulgent pieces of tripe that I've ever seen. In addition, it's filled with acting that fills almost every niche: overacting, wooden, laughable, stiff. You name it, it's in there.

For some bad reason that I can't remember, I thought it'd be fun to see it on the opening weekend. Being that I hate crowds and so does my wife, it was a stupid idea. The odds that we'd not only get a good seat and not be bothered by people were pretty slim. As it turns out, I was bothered by someone more than I've ever been bothered by someone at the movies. It was worse than the time I saw The Mummy Returns with my brother and some yahoos behind us started screaming "Yeah! Rock! Yeah!" We looked at each other, nodded and moved to the other side of the theater. We had no such luxury this night because it was sold out.

The movie Contact is like that old capsule cold remedy of the same name. The Contact cold medicine commercials had the visual of slow-motion-pulling the cold capsule apart and all the multi-colored medicine beads fell out and bounced around. That is how this movie feels. It's like a mishmash of people throwing in every idea under the sun because it might be neat.

In the theater, the movie starts. Contact starts with a view of Earth with music and other atmosphere noise. The view then pulls back as it races through solar systems, stars, planets, etc. It's semi-neat, but way too long at 3 and a half minutes of mostly silence. I had a feeling right then we were in trouble. In the row I was in, there was an empty seat to my right. Then there was a lady, who was next to the empty seat, with her husband, who was three seats away from me. I could hear him murmuring to her during the sequence such obviousness as "They must be going through other universes."

They were an interesting pair, those two. She was silent save for the popcorn bag that she felt compelled to roll up when she was done eating a handful or two and then she would unroll it when she wanted to eat more. During this movie that was every 5 minutes of 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE', MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH, 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE'. That alone was almost enough to set me off. If you're going to be eating it during the whole movie then why in the hell are you making a shit-ton of noise opening and closing it!?

The husband was even worse. He felt compelled to make a comment, explain things to his wife or guess at every upcoming thing in the movie.

Right off the bat, after the second scene starts, we see a young Eleanor Arroway, or Ellie, on her ham radio. She's calling for someone to pick up. A guy finally comes on the other end. She asks him where he is from. The guy says "Pensacola." She asks her father, "Pensacola. Where's that?" Before her father can answer, Mr. Helpful responds in a hurried whisper, "Florida!"

Back to the movie, we see Jodie Foster playing a grown-up version of Ellie starting her job with SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) in South America. She's now a scientist. From the start, her character makes no sense. She listens to stars for noise. Her first one is one that was a parser cataloged in 1982. This is all well and good, but shouldn’t' she be tracking stars that haven't been analyzed before? Soon, she runs into a long-haired man named Father Palmer, a man that almost became a priest, but now writes about human relations in technology. They hook up and she never calls him again.

Along the way, we're introduced to characters like the sympathetic blind scientist, the smarmy politician, the crazy cult leader, the lovable scientists, etc.

Later, we're shown a flashback clip of Ellie as a girl. She's looking at stars outside her home and calls her Dad to come see them. He doesn't answer so she goes to investigate. The guy in the theater now turns into Mr. Guesser and offers this nugget, "He's dead!", which is sort of correct. Her father has had a heart attack. She slow-motion rushes to get her father's pills which are down the hall to which Mr. Guesser responds with "It's the wrong pills!" Um, no jerk, she was just too late! I start seething. It's only 15 minutes into the movie and already I feel like strangling this guy.

Back in the movie, Ellie goes into a meeting for private funding to use a bank of satellites in the New Mexico desert for SETI use. When the trustees have the gall to question the practicality of listening for life in space, Ellie responds in here usual mature fashion by ripping them a new one. She makes an impassioned speech about crazy ideas like someone flying or breaking the sound barrier and only asks them for some ingenuity. Coming from someone that sounds like a raving lunatic, how dare they question the importance of finding other life? In a normal world, she'd be thrown out and made a laughing stock, but this is Hollywood where impassioned speeches get people to change their minds everyday so she gets her funding.

At the new place, she quickly gets word that her funding isn't getting cut, but rather the use of the government-owned antennae dishes. Again, it's that same Washington guy played by James Woods that shuts her down. She reacts in the same way by throwing a hissy fit. In true Hollywood fashion, shortly after she's told that she has three months left on the project, she hears a signal coming from space soon after and the movie is off and running as they excitedly start cataloging the signal.

Because it's such a huge discovery, the government gets involved. James Woods shows up as a government official. He's the one great thing in the movie as he flings semi-condescending zingers to the scientists. Angela Basset also shows up as (I'm assuming), the secretary of state and in my opinion is extremely wasted in this role. Oh sure, she does make a complaint about Hitler being the first thing the aliens see (they transmitted back the 1936 Berlin Olympics broadcast), but most of the time she is delegated to such hard hitting dialogue as "Doctor, what does it mean?" or "What do we know?"

Meanwhile, Mr. Guesser in my row is offering all sorts of guesses. He guessed wrong about what the first transmission was. Later in the movie, Ellie gets an email and he shouts out, "It's the priest!" Wrong again, but I started guessing that I was going to have to kill him if he didn't shut up soon.

Back to the movie... Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about this movie is the use of the whole CNN staff. I can understand using Larry King as a host because he does play himself very well and has done so in several movies, but to use the whole network roster? It gets a little sad and it now looks very dated to see stiff newscasters reading fake copy about a supposed real event. It comes off more like they were reporting the weather, as opposed to the historic event that it's supposed to be.

Even more cringe inducing is the use of a real President Clinton speech in the place where the president comments on the transmission from space.

Look, I know that Hollywood really loved Clinton, but the speech comes off as extremely vague for such an event. I would have to believe that a monumental event such as this would have to call for a president to be extremely involved, especially with what comes later. Where was Morgan Freeman when we needed him? He's played a credible president before. For that matter, if you're going to use the real president at the time, why wouldn't you at least try to cast the rest of his staff as their real-life counterparts? Without familiar names it just appears as it is, a bad use of stock footage. I think it's the only movie that's ever used real-life footage of a sitting president in a fictional film.

Later, a blueprint is found in another layer of the transmission. It calls for a pod to be built on top of a tower around what looks like those rotating hula hoop things from Superman: The Movie. The pod calls for just one person to ride in it with no food or bathroom. Apparently the aliens didn't plan for a long trip. This brings me back to the president. I would have to think that a real president would again be really involved in this process.

The day of the pod launch comes and it gets destroyed. Apparently, they'll spend billions of dollars on a high-tech space pod, but cut the security budget so that Gary Busey's kid gets up to the tower to sabotage it? We have the Army and we even have the technology of a photo ID coupled with an appropriate security roster. And isn't that a warning sign to run when you see someone that looks like Gary Busey's kid? I don't know about you, but if I see Jake Busey anywhere near, I'm running.

By the way, Mr. Guesser became Mr. Obvious and commented 'Uh Oh' when Jake Busey showed up. While he didn't put two and two together about Jake being the leader of a doomsday cult until they pointed it out in the movie (his response: "Oh that was the guy!"), he did appropriately point out that some shit was going down.

So with the sacrificial lamb out of the way, Ellie gets picked to go into space. It's an overly long sequence that requires her to emotionally stroll down a long walk way to get sealed in the pod. I know she's crazy, but don't you think that she'd be excited as hell to go visit ET? She walks down the hall like she's going to a firing squad.

Thankfully, this whole sequence was really loud so I could only hear the murmur of Mr. Obvious/Guesser/Helper. Ellie is thrust up and down worm hole after worm hole until she gets to the end. There she meets the alien representative, who shows up as her father! Apparently, it would be too distressing to see a real alien? As if the horrific space voyage wasn't horrible enough?

She's sent back home and the pod falls into the safety net. At this point, the bad news is given. She had never left! Now I know I'm not a scientist and that I don't know squat about how technology works, but I do think that if I was going to send someone into space using a new-fangled pod delivery system that I'd test it out first to see if it worked.

At this point, Mr. Guesser burst out loud, "I knew it!!!!" I'm thinking, "Sure you did!"

So of course there's a congressional inquiry about the debacle and Ellie is put in the spotlight as someone who collaborated on a multi-billion dollar scam. Of course, she responds in her usual respectable demeanor, by crying and yelling that it was true. Way to not appear as a raving lunatic!

After the hearings, Angela Basset, in one of her small lines, says to James Woods that the static that was recorded by Foster lasted a whole 18 hours, which would mean that even though it was instantaneous, she was gone for 18 hours. James Woods' response: "Really?!" Mr. Obvious' response: "Really?!" My response was to glare in his direction.

At the end of the movie, right before the credits, the following appears on the screen: "For Carl". Mr. Obvious responds with, "Carl Sagan!"

I yell out, "No f^&*king shit!"

The credits roll and everyone picks up their stuff to leave.

I turn to my wife and calmly say, "I'm going to tell this motherf^&*er how much he ruined this movie for me!"

I turn around and start walking toward the guy, who seems very oblivious to how annoying he was. Laura is desperately clinging to my arm. She keeps saying, "Don't!" "Stop!" and "It's not worth it!" several times. I finally calm down, but inside I'm still fuming at this guy. I just can't believe that he can't understand that no one wants to hear his commentary. I also couldn't believe that his wife would put up with his helpful suggestions through every show or movie that they'd watch.

I can just picture him watching Seinfeld with her and when Kramer walks through the door, he'd chime in with "That's Kramer!"

I think I might have enjoyed Contact had I watched it at another screening. It taught me a valuable lesson. Don't go see Jodie Foster movies if you don't enjoy overacting... that and don't go see a movie on opening night if you afraid of someone ruining because odds are pretty good that they will.