I first saw part of "Contact"on TV a year ago but only saw the whole movie tonight,so at last i feel qualified to comment on it. First off the initial sequence "pulling away" from Earth is extremely unrealistic-then we cut to the young Ellie Arroway [later played by Jodie Foster]-played by a girl who bears no resemblance to foster at all! It gets a little better when the aliens send an encrypted message --don"t you wish just once they would send a message saying "Hi,this is what we look like,we"ll be there shortly,get the beers in". The message contains plans for an alien machine[this idea ripped off from the 1950s movie This Island Earth] which eventually transports Foster to another galaxy. The whole thrust of the movie is spiritual and Foster seems incapable of projecting ANY emotion, let alone deep ones! Trying to think who should have played Arroway,i thought of Whoopi Goldberg [spiritual, integrity, character] but i guess that would have been too radical for Hollywood. Anyways, we get to the "space travel" scene copied from "2001" but worth seeing again,and when Arroway gets back nobody believes her! Unless i missed something, theachine is still working so why didn"t she say "if you don"t believe me.take a ride yourself"?