Critics have been weighing in on Disclosure Day, which sees Steven Spielberg returning to his beloved science fiction genre.

In his latest big-screen offering, the legendary filmmaker is once again exploring the idea of extraterrestrial beings coming to earth – only this time he’s taking a close look at the philosophical and religious implications of an alien invasion.

Disclosure Day boasts a star-studded cast that includes Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth, and tells the story of a small group of individuals who become involved in a government conspiracy to keep the existence of intelligent alien life a secret.

Early reviews hailed the film as a “gripping” and “thrilling’ masterpiece from the legendary director, earning an 82% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, not all reviewers were in love with the new sci-fi blockbuster, with some critics – including several from prominent British outlets – claiming it is “drab” and a “rehash” of Spielberg’s past works.

Here’s a selection of what critics are saying about Disclosure Day…

“Disclosure Day feels not like a repetition but like a thunderclap culmination, the kind of movie you make when, at age 79, you’re not only at the peak of your skills, but you realise time is running out. What, exactly, do you want to say, and how do you find the pictures, the words?

“The pictures and words are all right there in Disclosure Day, an eleventh-hour plea to reconnect with all that makes us human, even if we need to invoke the help of imaginary aliens to do it.”

“Disclosure Day has many layers, but it is also a crackerjack rip-roaring ride for much of its running time, a movie that essentially centres on two main characters in search of answers to what is happening to them, keeping the audience in the dark as much as they are.”

“What Spielberg has conjured here is some of his vintage boldness in transforming the cinema screen into a magical theatre of childlike wonder.”

“While Spielberg has never lost his sense of fun, Disclosure Day is uniquely fortified by the sense that he’s still searching for new ways to enrapture a jaded audience with his spectacle, and the movie’s ethos becomes that much harder to deny every time its director manages to suspend our disbelief all over again.

“There might not be anything here quite as inventive as the spider robot sequence from Minority Report, but a certain setpiece – the one that starts with a car getting shoved into an oncoming freight train – is as gripping as Hollywood action gets.”

“Disclosure Day is never anything other than entertaining and grade-A fun; rare enough in the movies or anywhere else, rocketing along with barnstorming set-pieces, exhilarating chases, funny lines and a career-topper of a performance from Blunt who may yet be morphing into a female version of Tom Hanks.”

“The movie duly pulls out all the stops, and then a couple more. As if to say, ‘still got it!’, there are big-ticket action sequences and the screwball comic interludes Spielberg always had a knack for. The ride is rarely dull.”

“There are allegories that can be read about fear of the unknown breeding cruelty and exploitation, but Disclosure Day is first and foremost a propulsive yarn with thematic roots in hope, truth, empathy and perhaps even spirituality.”

IGN (7/10)

“The film is, in a lot of ways, vintage Spielberg: He hasn’t lost a step with a camera that sprints from start to finish, there are some fantastic technical sequences, and the performances from the two leads in particular are great.

“And while Disclosure Day stumbles a bit for me at the finish line in a way that makes some of the film’s other nits a little more worth picking, it’s still an original, big-budget science fiction conversation-starter from one of cinema’s all-time greats.”

“While Disclosure Day doesn’t live up to the high standards he’s [Spielberg] set, it’s still a thrill ride, thumbing its nose at authority and begging its audience for more empathy, not less.

“Even if not all the pieces snap flawlessly into place, Disclosure Day is a reminder of how much magic is still left up Spielberg’s sleeve.”

“[Disclosure Day’s] script exaggerates the best and the worst of how humans might respond to such a revelation, and Spielberg 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, with a generalised plea for cross-species understanding that, even bolstered by the reliable stirrings of a John Williams score, left me dispiritingly dry-eyed.”

“Spielberg, as part of the film’s publicity, has suggested that he believes in alien visitations, and that he’s an advocate for disclosure. But where Close Encounters tapped into the mystery of all this with an innocence that was both starry-eyed and spectacular, Disclosure Day feels like a thriller docudrama that’s too cut-and-dried about what it believes.

“The actors are quite good (especially Blunt, who makes you feel she’s seeing the uncanny), but for all the film’s slow build it doesn’t take us anywhere overly surprising. It just confirms the ‘truth’ that’s been out there for so long it’s starting to feel like a fairy tale for the dispossessed.”

“Essentially, it’s a drab X-Files episode, or a more conventional One Battle After Another, in which some people we don’t care about are hunted by some other people we don’t care about.”

“Sadly, there’s nothing original here, or at least nothing to match, say, Jordan Peele’s vastly superior UFO drama Nope. Instead it’s just Spielberg badly rehashed, poorly reheated, lukewarm and with extra treacle.”

“It is shot and staged with Spielberg’s signature elegance: a central foot-to-car-to-train chase moves with such breathless lucidity it is as if the director is beaming excitement directly into your brain. But the plotting surrounding the action is often woolly and lopsided, while the tone is an awkward mix of solemnity and silliness.”

Disclosure Day is out in cinemas now.