6.2 ?! Totally underrated movie

it was awesome! i agree too

Well said.

It's like this movie comes very close to crossing the border into the ridiculous and tacky, but never quite does it. It manages to stay on the credible and intense side of 'acceptable' or 'believable'.

It has so many moments where a lesser movie would have fallen, and had the audience slapping their foreheads, or groaning - but this movie never goes over the edge, and I am pretty amazed by it. It even stays really low in hollywood cliché department. I mean, the expected annoyances and typical hollywood-esque stupidities are almost completely absent from this movie.

Usually even good movies have groan-inducing moments and places where you can predict exactly what happens, and how.

The Arrival is different, it's really a unique piece of movie history - it doesn't even have that heavy, painful stench of "political correctness" that most movies suffer terribly from. Well, okay - the women have really short hair, there has to be a token black kid, the 'experts' are often women (how likely is that in real life, honestly?) and the E.T.s don't wear clothes, but other than that, this is a very rare movie in that one feels refreshed, almost as if the intelligence of the audience is respected a little bit, instead of shoveling one-liners and politically-correct clichés and preaching of the 'correct values' right up our faces, like so many movies do. Well, there was the bit about 'greenhouse gases' and 'global warming' crap, but it's pretty minor, compared to so many other movies.

I mean, there's really not much 'funny banter' or 'comic reliefs', and as others have pointed out, Charlie's character "Zane" is really very 'human' compared to many action ficks, where the heroes act like they are invulnerable and aren't afraid to take on a huge gang of hostile E.T.s by themselves.

Of course this movie could be better - the main premise IS a little bit silly for many reasons* - but after you have accepted the premise in all it's silliness, the movie really WORKS.

The only real gripe about it -plotwise- is that why on Earth (no pun intended) would a paranoid guy like Zane TRUST a strange (on many levels) black kid who he has never met, knows nothing about, and who just SUDDENLY appears, when he's starting to 'listen' again? I mean, even a regular guy would probably have hard time trusting a trespasser and a spy like that. If we are honest here, would even a black man trust a strange, black kid, who simply pops up in the middle of the night? Or a white kid, for that matter? I mean, the whole premise that he just trusts "Kiki" (what kind of a name is THAT anyway?) 100%, without questions, all the way, until he refuses to press the button - but doubts his own girlfriend, who he has known a lot longer, many times, and a lot sooner? After he figures out it probably wasn't his girlfriend, he doesn't automatically think: "Oh, it must be KIKI!"... why not? Because they are such good 'chumps', after all they've been through.. ? What? Seriously? RRGH! STUPID! ..

But it's a minor gripe. As far as E.T. movies go, this is perhaps the best, all things considering. It would have been even better, if instead of the silly premise, there would have been a more plausible and interesting plot, but this movie executes it all so well, that I can't really bring myself to critisize it too much.




* but not for the reasons mentioned by some people, like E.T.s looking 'human' - well, why do WE look human? It's only because our bodies were carefully designed and DNA engineered so that they can perform the maximum of functions with the minimum of effort - two legs, two hands, two eyes, two ears, the whole usual bipedal system with opposing thumbs and heads as the highest part of the body - it's pretty universal, I'd say - if only because it's very handy, and probably the optimized way a higher being can function on the physical plane.

Of course there are variations, and not all E.T.s look completely human - different planets have different needs, and different spiritual evolution and intelligence levels also have different requirements, as to what sort of physical vessel is optimal for their capacity and sensitivity. It only makes sense that a lot of the visitors would be bipedals, have two hands and a head, just like humans.

Besides, in this movie, they don't look all that human - but I think they look ridiculous. That flapping skin that makes an awful, icky sound, while it shows the BRAIN from time to time - that can't be useful, or any kind of good design for a head. I'd say it's completely unrealistic.

And being able to reverse the joints .. that's a bit ridiculous, but it's not that bad. Still, someone who says that E.T.s MUST look different from humans, doesn't think about it very clearly. I'd say Earth people probably look close to what a "prototype human" would look like, before all the variables are taken into account, and before different circumstances shape and mold the bodies structures a little.

So, some have stronger built and bigger heads, some are thin and resemble the Japanese people. And so on. Even on planet Earth, there's lots of variation - like the ancient Egyptian people with their long skulls (for bigger brains, because their spiritual level was so high, that the contemporary brain size wouldn't be enough to accommodate their mental needs etc.), and different 'races' and sizes of the bodies.

In other words, as we are really "E.T.s" also, from other planets' perspective, we are all space creatures, using planets as our spaceships, we are really part of a bigger human family, that consists of a lot of bipedal 'humanoid' creatures. Besides, wouldn't the designers of a human body try to make it resemble the designers themselves anyway? Also, we shouldn't be surprised to incarnate a completely non-humanoid-looking body some day.

But it'd be silly to demand that all E.T.s must look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. The reason for it.. err.. well, they just.. have to? Ridiculous.

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I agree, it is one of the most underrated movies ever. I loved it. I have given it a 8 out of 10.


I'm not following you, I'm looking for you.......... There's a big difference.

I agree

Yo momma