Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman) wrote the governments protocol for first contact with an alien species. So when a 300 year old spacecraft is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean Goodman's directions are followed and a team is formed. Goodman a psychologist, Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone) a biologist, Harry Adams (Samuel L Jackson) a mathematician, and Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber) an astrophysicist make up the first contact team directed by Harold Barnes (Peter Coyote). Soon the team is setup in the underwater HQ and sets off to discover what mysteries the ship holds. Upon arrival they discover that the ship is American in origin and also contains a giant, liquid, golden sphere. They return to the base and later Adams returns to the ship and appearently enters the sphere, although he supposedly remembers nothing. Soon after the computer systems start acting up. Determining they're recieving a coded message, they decipher it and make contact with the sphere, which wants to be called Jerry. Before long the crew is attacked by a variety of deep sea creatures presumably brought on by Jerry.
Sphere is based on the book by the same name from Michael Crichton. You get the feeling that Crichton could not figure out how to bring the story to a conclusion and therefore focused soley on the setup. Sphere is all buildup and no payoff. You sit there and wait and wait and your reward is one of the worst endings ever filmed. None of the actors put forth an effort worth noting, which is saying something considering you have Hoffman, Stone, and Jackson, each a Hollywood heavyweight. There is no character developement and they are not very likable to begin with. I didn't care if they made it back to the surface or died a horrible death at the bottom of the ocean. Sphere is a complete waste of time. One of the Navy officers at the end of the movie sums it up perfectly when he said "What the hell was that?"