> No one likes Contact because it sucks. I was just talking to someone yesterday about how much it sucks in fact. They spend about 98% of the movie making the machine, .0003% of the movie in the machine, and about .5% of the movie explaining the machine. The other 1.4997% is used for the credits. Not only is it completely lacking in a climax, but there aren't any lasers! Come on! What sci-fi movie could possibly be complete without lasers??

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And ninjas! Where were the ninjas? Please. Here's how to fix Contact to make it watchable:

First, we start off with Arnold Schwarzenegger as an astrophysicist who doesn't play by the rules. He meets a woman (Instead of Jodie Foster, let's get someone a bit more busty. Denise Richards will do.) in a bar, they go off to have a gratuitous sex scene that is tastefully edited to get that highly coveted PG-13 rating but are interrupted by ninjas or government assassins or something. A car chase ensues with much gunfire. Arnold and Denise get separated (she probably gets killed by a sniper), but after Arnold walks away from the explosions, he finds that she dropped a DVD-ROM (gotta stay current) into his jacket. After viewing the DVD, Arnold now knows that the evil government/corporation is secretly working with aliens who are planning to invade the Earth through this giant Machine that they've sent plans for. However, just after viewing the DVD, the disc is recaptured by the bad guys and Arnold just barely manages to escape, unsinged from the blast.

So now we're in the rainforest, where the great Machine has been built and it's up to Arnold to destroy it. After sneaking into the control center, he fights his way into the Main Bad Guy's headquarters when he is attacked by... Denise Richards! Actually, by several Denises! You see, she's actually one of several super-powerful clones or maybe she's what all the space aliens look like and the one that helped Arnold earlier was the one who turned to good or something. Anyway. After defeating all four Denise Richards, he'll probably say something like "No more fourplay!" and drop them into a giant spinning blades of death thing.

Meanwhile, in the control center, a red digitial readout is counting down the time to Invasion! so Arnold manages to truss the Main Bad Guy (Tim Curry) up in C4 or Plutonium or whatever the popular explosive is these days and throws him into the Machine just as the counter gets to 0:01! He then outruns the huge explosion which incinerates most of the rainforest and everything is okay.

Just before the credits roll, we see one of the Denise Richards climb out of the rubble of the Machine so there's a sequel.

-Faux "There, now that's better" Pas