The reason the ideas in the film seem believable are because they are based upon actual science, the book (and screenplay for the film) were written by the late great Carl Sagan who refused to tack on any sci-fi elements just for the sake of it. The film is great but (and I hate to be one of these people) the book is better, if only because it's longer and more fleshed out, and you find out MUCH more about the aliens who sent the signal and about other life in the Universe in general.

Great movie. And probably the only movie that tells us in a believable way and a way that could actually happen how our first contact with aliens will be. Also its about the only movie i have ever seen that is not a documentary that has an actual president in it in a way that looks like he is a member of the acting cast He was not, when he was talking to the press he was actually talking about a meteorite that could contain life. That was edited so it looked like he was talking about the signal. The fact that in the end the atheist Dr. Arroway hand an experience that came down to something similar to that what religious people feel when they think they are in contact with their god/gods gave this movie in my book an A+

So awesome.

I was 10 when I went to the cinema watch this movie for the first time, and to this day it still is the deepest movie I've ever seen. I had the book at my home but I lost it while moving out and unfortunately never got to read it (yet). The plot is awesome and it's based on true science - the factorization into primes, for instance, that the aliens use to communicate with us, was actually tried out (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message) and you can learn more about it in a fascinating paper called "A Tale of Two Sieves" by mathematician Carl Pomerance:

"The cardinality of 1679 was chosen because it is a semiprime (the product of two prime numbers), to be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23 columns".

@BenFranklin: Thanks for the suggestion, regarding the DNA - I saw a similar theory in Through the Wormhole I think (or was it NOVA ScienceNOW?) S02E09 or S03E02 but I Googled a bit and I think they haven't found an intelligent slope in our DNA plotting, the frequency seems to be near-randomic.

The reason the ideas in the film seem believable are because they are based upon actual science, the book (and screenplay for the film) were written by the late great Carl Sagan who refused to tack on any sci-fi elements just for the sake of it. The film is great but (and I hate to be one of these people) the book is better, if only because it's longer and more fleshed out, and you find out MUCH more about the aliens who sent the signal and about other life in the Universe in general.

Brilliant!

I'm not really a science-fiction guy, but this one is fantastic.
I love how they focused on the character of Dr. Arroway along with her father & the idea of a machine creating a wormhole - it makes the plot actually believable.

In some documentary (I think it was "Ancient Aliens") one scientist said that the human body is completely restorable with only 8-10% of the DNA (or even less). And if we were sent by a higher species... where would they hide a plan so we can decrypt it as soon as we are smart enough? Yes, in the DNA.
That's pretty conclusive, isn't it!?
Imagine how incredible this would be :D

Totally agree with @dunpealhunter's comment below.


Similar Movie:
http://trakt.tv/movie/the-last-mimzy-2007

It's a great movie with a perfect story line.