Too much of everything

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I don't remember the original, so the plot was all new to me. It may have looked like it was derivative of other stories, but that all depends on which one came first.Unlike more modern programmes that have 2 - 3 stories running in them this one was an old fashioned Sci Fi story from the golden age of Sci Fi when the PC was nowt but Sci Fi itself, and Aliens were all bad guys, so the Beeb had to try and Jazz it up a bit with the addition of a spy sub plot, but hey it didn't really detract from the story too much.If you like your Sci Fi old school then this is for you, but if you want multi layered complex story lines move on.The truth of the matter is that the acting was brilliant, and in particular the beautiful Miss Reilly kept this old sci fi buff watching through to the end. Well worth the watch. 10 out of 10 for Miss Reilly(she is a stunner).

Despite some of the disparaging comments on here, I gave this a go and I think it was more than worth an hour and a half of my time. I enjoy Si-fi that's more based on ideas than SFX, and this was a prime (if somewhat truncated) example. I agree they could have done with more time but I didn't see anything wrong with the acting, Tom Hardy being particularly good. All in all very watchable stuff, which deals with issues from the more interesting end of science fiction..p.s, paulj-murphy, I know you probably wanted to look smart but they didn't send any messages to Andromeda, they only conversed with the computer, which wasn't millions of light-years away after all...

This pointless remake of the 1961 classic adds nothing to the original. Apparently "updated" to 1970's production (and score), 80's graphics and the occasional 90's technical term, it doesn't even qualify as an homage to the era.The characters have no depth and less credibility. The one dimensional depiction of Dawnay (Jane Asher) blindly pursuing the holy grail of genetics is an affront to anyone who has ever entered a laboratory. The essence of the scientific method is to question everything, and no scientist with more than half a brain would take the course of those portrayed here. Even the initially gullible Hardy (John Fleming) is unrealistically slow to develop a conscience and realise the potential issues raised by his actions. This is the kind of portrayal that gets scientists a bad name.Equally insulting are the scenes that portray the destruction of monitors and keyboards as integral to the destruction of the alien computer. How many people are actually stupid enough to believe this nowadays? Regardless of familiarity with the original version, the plot is 100% predictable from the first few minutes right up until the last five. In that last five minutes is the most dramatic plot point of the entire film. The turning of the creature against its creator, the examination of humanity vs. the alien, the very human moral dilemmas, freedom and pre-destination, all take place in under two minutes. There is no examination of the conflicts faced by the creature or their resolution. (It feels suspiciously as if there was a large edit here.) Similarly, throughout the film any opportunity to explore morality, the role of technology, or cloning is passed by. According to Richard Fell (BBC4 web-site), one of the key questions addressed is "How complex does a computer have to be before we consider it to have some kind of human qualities?". This has been under constant examination since 1950, and Alan Turing's paper "Computing machinery and intelligence" (available on-line). This adaptation adds absolutely nothing to the debate, even failing to acknowledge that for over twenty years there has been a growing opinion that it doesn't actually matter.Sadly the film isn't even bad enough to be amusing.If you're interested in the ideas of the film then read Crichton's original "Andromeda Strain", although the plot of this version is actually closer to Sagan's "Contact" (more investigative, and perhaps even more worthy than Crichton's). {Edit: Oops. That should have been "the original 'A for Andromeda' by Hoyle/Elliot", of course. Not "Andromeda Strain".}

Any schoolboy would be ashamed of the scientific mistakes in this. For example, the team send radio messages to Andromeda and get immediate replies! Andromeda is millions of light years away and so any radio signals would take millions of years to get there and back! Also, at one point in the story a technician saves a genome or record of the entire genetic code of a human being on a single floppy disk! Fred Hoyle would be rotating in his grave.The acting is equally bad. The two male leads are the "geekiest" type of anoraks one could possibly hope not to meet, and they are as wet as they come. Neither speak their lines clearly. And the Army General is about as nonmilitary as you could get...he looks like your average window cleaner.Please please please just go back to making them the way they originally did in the sixties, BBC...