[ZERO]
+ Worst Movie of the Year
+ Most Deserved Flop of the Year + Most Overrated Movie of the Year
 |
| Two Hollywood stars line up in front of a row of giant satellites on this poster for Robert Zemeckis' Contact |
Dr. Ellie Arroway has always been preoccupied with the possibility of life in space, so that when the day comes when strange sounds arrive to earth from somewhere out there, she becomes central for the US response to the news.
Contact is written by James V. Hart (Hook (1991)) and Michael Goldenberg (Bed of Roses (1996)), adapting the same-titled 1985 novel by Carl Sagan, and directed by Illinoisan master filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)), whose 11th feature it is.
After a very long space intro using CGI, - the film also later has fair CGI effects, - the absolute nightmare that is Contact begins. Harmlessly at first, but soon it becomes clear that Jodie Foster (Flight Plan (2005)) is here trapped in an insufferable abomination of a film in a non-character, who gets a bit of nonsense to spout to mark that she represents 'science', whereupon she has to confront apathy, stupidity, lack of curiosity and braindead 'religious' examinations throughout the film.
Contact is enormously tiring in every aspect: Among them are Matthew McConaughey (Sahara (2005)), who here looks like a surfer and talks like a Texan farmhand, - but is a Christian philosopher (!!), who waxes on.
We never get to the aliens or anything eye-opening, provocative or exciting. Rarely has a big-budget studio epic been this modest, empty and insufferable. Contact is terrible on every level.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 90 mil. $
Box office: 171.1 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.90 times its cost)
[Contact was released 11 July (North America) and runs 150 minutes. Contact was first envisioned as a film by Sagan and his then girlfriend Ann Druyan but then written as a novel first instead. It was developed as a movie with Roland Joffé and then George Miller attached as director: The former quit, and the latter was fired, before the project landed with Zemeckis. Foster was paid 9 mil. $ for her performance. Shooting took place from September 1996 - February 1997 in Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, California, including in Los Angeles, Virginia, Washington DC, Fiji, Canada and in Puerto Rico. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Men in Black, to a 20.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#4), grossing 100.9 mil. $ (59 % of the total gross). The film's international gross numbers are regrettably not made public. The film was nominated for the Best Sound Oscar, lost to Titanic. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to 5 notches over this one. The White House were unhappy with the film's use of Bill Clinton quotes (about other matters) as part of its narrative; CNN were unhappy with their participation in the film; and George Miller and Francis Ford Coppola both unsuccessfully sued Warner Bros. over the film. Zemeckis returned with Robert Zemeckis on Smoking, Drinking and Drugging in the 20th Century: In Pursuit of Happiness (1999, TV documentary) and theatrically with What Lies Beneath (2000). Foster returned in Anna and the King (1999); McConaughey in Amistad (1997). Contact is fresh at 67 % with a 6.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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