Arrival * * 1/2

Honestly I don’t know what all the fuss is about with this film.

   Some say it’s even better than that previous SF blockbuster, Interstellar.  All I can say to that is "I should hope so!"  Some say it’s the best SF film since one of the greatest of all SF Films - 2001 A Space Odyssey.  All I can say to that is “It most certainly is not!” Maybe people compare it to 2001 because both films feature huge black mysterious obelisks that just sit there, messing with us, like an imposing silent person with their arms crossed.

Amy: We Human
Aliens: 'Yip Yip Yip Yip"

   But where Arrival fails - for me anyway - is that it painfully tries to explain it all to us, forgetting that many of us actually like the mystery and feel it enhances the story.

   To be honest, for a fair part of this film I was bored. Once they kicked into explaining it all away I thought it had crapped in its own nest.

  The story:  One day huge objects suddenly appear on different places on earth.  They're like 80 story high elongated egg shaped windowless skyscrapers.  They just sit there hovering upright a little above the surface.  There's a dozen of them, so it’s like one for each part of the world, including the Aussies.

   Because they can’t get through to them, or they get the wrong idea, the Chinese and Ruskies decide they're going to blow theirs up (typical!) which is a bit of an overreaction to illegal parking. Whereas the Americans decide to get a really, really ,really smart girl to try and communicate with them.

   The aliens look a bit like overgrown monochrome versions of the Martians from Sesame Street; remember them? “Yip-yip-yip-yip!”, they were always my favorite! So for that I give Arrival a star.

   The brilliant girl looks like Amy Adams, (that’s because she is Amy Adams).  She is a world expert on languages at 30 (yerrrrr right).  But as usual, Amy does a good job in convincing us (she’s a good actress alright). What she discovers is that linear time might mean something to us, but it don’t mean much to the Aliens.  Hence, a bit like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, as she starts communicating with them she begins to slip in and out of time and experience new memories of things that other people don’t know about.  

   Well, I'm not going to tell you how it all ends up, but for me there was a plot point as big as black hole, which I can't mention because it’ll spoil it for you.  But to be honest, if they hadn't tried to explain everything away I probably wouldn’t have noticed it and might have even happily accepted it.  Sometimes the best form of communication is to STFU. (Yeah, I already know what you’re thinking as you read that last sentence).