E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982/2002) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"I'll be... right here."
Starring Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Robert McNaughton, Dee Wallace Stone, Peter Coyote. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, one of my favorite movies, was rereleased this year with some added footage, and perhaps more notablyy, some things missing. It's indicative of our age of limitless political correctness that Steven Spielberg felt the pressure to remove guns from FBI agents' hands and replace them with innocuous walkie-talkies. Had I not known about the modification, I wouldn't have noticed it, of course, but as the hoopla about it has been deafening, the effect is both distracting. Distracting because a classic has been altered; disturbing because the director had the need to alter it.
It's Spielberg's movie, of course, and he can do whatever he wants to it as long as the original is available to us. It is; in fact, the DVD release will contain both versions of the movie. In any event, he rip out half of the scenes and E.T. would still be a masterpiece, a transcendent film experience that we have all identified with at one point or another in our lives. It is a combination of fantasy wish-fulfillment and poignant alienation (no pun intended), the former larger than life and the latter just under the surface. It is because Spielberg was able to tap into both that the movie endures.
The question everyone asks when E.T. comes up in conversation is "did you cry?" The first time through, I bawled like a baby. The second time, ditto. On this viewing, I didn't get too far past the sniffles during the Big Scene, but more significantly, I felt a lump come to my throat at moments that didn't previously affect me. One such is the scene where Elliot shows E.T. to his siblings, who approach the unknown with an uncannily convincing blend of incredulity, fear and wonder. Another is the Halloween sequence, in which E.T., covered in a sheet, runs toward a kid dressed up as Yoda, shouting "Hooooooome."
This is a movie that has no qualms about being manipulative. The difference between this and the dreck to which "manipulative" is applied as a pejorative is that Spielberg is skilled at toying with the audience's emotions. He earns his sentiment. By the time the mother of all tear-jerkers comes around in E.T.'s final scene, I felt that the characters had completed a monumental, Joseph Campbell quest, that their hero's journey had won them the right to this moment, still so geniune after twenty years.
As if to make up for the firearms that are no more, Spielberg has added an extended sequence involving the titular alien taking a bath. It's cute, but distracting; the CGI effects are vastly "superior" to the puppetry of the rest of the film, and the scene sticks out like a sore thumb. In any case, I much prefer E.T.'s static doll face; it's his charm, his trademark, his claim to fame, and who knows if he would have remained in our collective psyche had he been given the super-mobile, humanoid complexion we see in these fleeting minutes.
E.T. is a cultural phenomenon, with ubiquitous merchandising, a pretty decent ride at Universal Studios Florida and about a thousand theatrical rereleases under its belt. There have been crappy movies that become brief wonders; then they saturate the market and leave the building. But when a movie has stuck around for this long, you know there's something there. It's that good.
Grade: A
Up Next: Death to Smoochy
©2002 Eugene Novikov
========== X-RAMR-ID: 31811 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 313577 X-RT-TitleID: 1006389 X-RT-SourceID: 610 X-RT-AuthorID: 1577 X-RT-RatingText: A
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews