What Critics Are Saying About Spielberg's Latest

Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day is getting rock-solid reviews from critics, with the sci-film clocking in at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences are a bit less enthused, at 75%. A sampling:

• Dana Stevens of Slate is a fan, seeing it as a continuation of the director's lifelong exploration of the idea that we humans might not be alone. But for "all its thematic ambition, including vast questions about geopolitical conflict, unresolved childhood trauma, humankind's potential for both good and evil, and the future of religious faith in a universe where Earth is not the only populated planet, this movie is at heart a rip-roaring cross-country chase."

• Manohla Dargis of the New York Times had a blast. It's "one of those movies that sweeps you up from the start and rarely lets you down," she writes. "A rollicking science-fiction adventure, it finds Spielberg revisiting a genre that he has populated with charming and horrifying extraterrestrials, genetically engineered dinosaurs and plugged-in psychics, and which has inspired some of his most popular and critical successes. The first time I watched the new movie, I scribbled 'I am having so much fun' in my notebook."
• Not so thrilled was Justin Chang of the New Yorker. Spielberg, he writes, "struggles to split the difference between paranoid-thriller cynicism and his usual mode of emotional uplift. That waffling ultimately strands Disclosure Day on a heartfelt yet fuzzy middle ground."
• Katie Walsh of Tribune News Service is mainly in the majority camp. "The first half of Disclosure Day is ominous and unknowable, (and) the second half is where Spielberg lets his earnestness shine, evoking childlike awe and wonder," she writes. "But the climax is unfortunately anti-climatic, as the film builds to a whirling crescendo of stratospheric concepts and rattling energy that he chooses not to satisfyingly pay off." Still, "while the destination isn't as exciting, the journey itself is deeply moving and brilliantly executed."