The message of the movie is very good. I dont believe the whole story is about a mans pursuit of his father, rather it's that all to often people lose sight of the importance of life (family, neighbor, national, international) in the pursuit of something else. In the movie it is the search for extraterrestrial life to the detriment of Roy and His mother but for anyone else it can be anything. We are the only life in the universe, we are what each other gets, and we need to stop looking to other things and start loving each other.