Review of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) by Saayaya K — 21 May 2016

E.T is still an extraordinarily powerful, emotive and lyrical work of art that is pretty much Spielberg showing us his heart in it's fullness. A deeply personal and touching story about childhood and the power of childhood friendship were one of the kids just happens to be a 10 million years young, greasy turd/big frog/melted mars bar looking alien.

It's the great directors purest evocation of growing up and the emotional turmoil of being a kid, featuring an extraordinary performance by Henry Thomas as Elliot, it feels raw and real in the family scenes, upsetting even ( mum Dee Wallace's reaction to seeing the alien for the first time is kind of gut wrenching in it's realness) and magical and wondrous in it's story book science fiction, fantasy, but it manages, like some of the best of the directors work to ground these extraordinary elements in the mundanity of everyday life and the normality of suburbia, making it all feel somehow utterly believable whilst you are watching.

It feels like this is how people, how kids would react to a creature from another planet appearing in their back garden. Folks who claim Spielberg had never made a grown up movie up to this point are fools, they are the Mormons of cinema strict, pretentious and narrow minded, E.

T is a movie about being a child of divorce, of being lost and confused and kinda marginalized amid strange and disturbing grown up problems and the general oppressive shitness of being small and young and friendless, Close Encounters was about a family falling apart because the father frankly hates the lot of them, and Jaws is about guilt and facing up to it (guilt being embodied by a huge rubber shark) there's an honesty to this movie that is more potent and affecting than a hundred real issue's movies made by oscar whores.

E.T is magic, wonder, happiness, scariness, sadness and confusion all wrapped up in one joyous, moving, perfect package. If you dont loose it every time that ending happens then you must be one hard bastard.