It brought up some really interesting questions and themes that should resonate with Latter-day Saints. I didn’t think the dad bailing was dumb at all - it was needed to highlight the other side of the main question. And making the child a meaningful character wouldn’t have worked; it would have derailed the main narrative. The ultimate question would have hit a little harder, but it wasn’t worth the wrench it would have thrown into the story.
The most impressive thing about the movie was the fact that they made up a legit language and then wrote a program to decipher it. That’s awesome.