> I'm curious to know how close it is to the book before I shell out the dough to see it in the theaters.

It's worth seeing just for the cinematography (and support of Sci-Fi movies!). I was not familiar with the story before seeing the movie and thought that the sequence leading up to "first contact" was very well done - I had no idea of whether the interaction was going to be like a scene from Contact or from Aliens. It was tense, atmospheric, and caused an audible reaction from the audience at times.