Bovie Movie

A rather over-zealous take on new age spirituality mars this otherwise impressive adaptation of Carl Sagan’s bestselling novel. Jodie Foster stars as the dedicated astronomer who receives a message from extraterrestrials explaining how humble humans can build a spacecraft and go to meet them. Matthew McConaughey plays the religious adviser battling for her soul, while Tom Skerritt and James Woods portray sceptical presidential aides. The digital effects are stunning and director Robert Zemeckis is at home with the action sequences; if only he’d stuck to the sci-fi. However, the climactic scene of Foster’s pod journey features one of the transcendent performances in all of cinema. 

The first two Shrek movies were packed with fairy-tale send-ups and warm humanity, and proved an absolute delight for young and old alike. The third outing shows signs of franchise fatigue as it struggles with a half-baked storyline in which the grumpy green ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) goes in search of a young King Arthur as heir to the throne of Far Far Away. The breathtakingly innovative wit of the earlier films may be lacking, yet there’s still plenty here to enjoy, from Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas’s manic double act as Donkey and Puss-in-Boots to some sly, “Once upon a time” in-jokes. But in keeping with the film’s less certain direction, entertaining scenes of adorably cheeky baby ogres are upstaged by a blandly mirthless human teenager in Artie (Justin Timberlake), who appears to have been brainstormed by marketing department suits eager to extend their audience demographics.