Contact MPAA Rating: PG Entertainment: +2 Content: -3

Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) has been fascinated with communication all her life. As a young girl, she would sit at her short-wave radio and seek voices from across the country. As she grew, she looked for voices from farther and farther away. Now as a doctor and a scientist, she scans space for evidence of other intelligent life. Despite the scorn of the scientific community, she endures and finally locates and records a cryptic message from a faraway galaxy. She struggles to decode the message while at the same time maintaining control of her project, which has become the envy of many power-hungry scientists. Ellie finally translates the code, and facilitates the construction of an otherworldly space travel device which takes her to the outer-reaches of space. The special effects and extraterrestrial appeal will make CONTACT a fairly successful movie with the intended audience of those ten and older.

There is a single, positive message as the film makes the strong statement that women are capable of being strong leaders and insightful scientists. Unfortunately, the film also makes some blatant and stereotypical statements about religious people. In fact, CONTACT may be the most damaging movie to people of faith Hollywood has made in a long time. The leading man is a seminary dropout who has a beer with Ellie and sleeps with her on the same day he meets her. After sex, they converse in bed and he tells her how important his faith in God is to him. He dubs himself a man of the cloth, without the cloth. Later in the movie, this same man becomes a nationally respected theologian and a spiritual counselor to the President of the United States. Another person of faith is portrayed as a psychotic doomsday preacher, and he eventually straps a bomb to himself so he can destroy the launch pad for the space travel device. Ellie herself is an atheist who constantly proclaims that faith in God is irrelevant to life. In the end, she learns the importance of faith, but it has nothing to do with God. She learns that the only thing that will fill our emptiness is each other. Language is also a problem with several crude words, obscenities and profanities. People who view this movie will not only make contact with intelligent life across the universe, but also with the ignorance and anti-Judeo/Christian bigotry of Hollywood.

Preview Reviewer: Jason Shepherd
Distributor: Warner Bros., 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522