Subject: Review: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

From: Jon Popick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 19:05:23 -0000

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Back when E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial was originally released, I was smack
in the middle of what the film's target demographic must have been.  For
some reason, though, my family never really embraced E.T. quite as
feverishly as the rest of the country did.  In our house, the top shelf of
family cinema was reserved for pictures like Gremlins, Star Wars,
Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Queen Mother of
watch-it-until-you-know-it-by-heart films, A Christmas Story (and, when my
parents were gone, Body Heat).

Until the screening of the spiffy new version of E.T., it had literally been
20 years since I had seen it.  If asked to recount the moments I could
remember, the sorry highlight reel would probably be shorter than a TV
commercial.  In fact, the one thing I distinctly recall from the 1982
viewing is being kind of troubled by the tract housing depicted in the film,
imagining myself living in a similar neighborhood, getting off the school
bus and not being able to tell which house was mine.

Still, I was anxious to see the new version, if only to answer these
questions: Would the film hold up after two decades or would it seem
derivative and overly schmaltzy?  Would years and years of cinematic
desensitization have numbed me to the point where E.T. would seem no more
emotionally warming than an episode of Reba, or would the magic of Steven
Spielberg transcend time and reveal itself as one of the best films ever
made?

For the most part, the film does hold up pretty well, though it is quite
derivative (particularly of The Day the Earth Stood Still) and pretty damn
schmaltzy, but not in a way that makes you feel like too much of a tool.
Save a new scene here and a re-done special effect there, E.T. is still the
same old film about a young boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas) who finds a
toddler-sized alien with a translucent chest, extendo-neck and voice like an
 Italian grandmother with a three-pack-a-day habit.

The alien, or "E.T.," was accidentally left behind by his brethren on a
scientific-type mission to Earth and holes up with Elliott and his family
until he can figure out how to build an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space
Modulator using typical household objects in order to relay a distress call
(or "phone home") to his planet.  E.T. does this after seeing a similar
device in a Buck Rogers comic strip, which is actually more of an
explanation than we ever got from MacGyver or those guys from The A-Team
(but this concept would never work now, because E.T. could phone home much
quicker, what with DSL and all).  And the little guy learns the language
faster than any other newcomer to this country ever has (yeah, I'm talking
to you, Mr. Schwarzenegger).

The re-release of E.T. offers plenty of chances to see exciting things, like
a very young Drew Barrymore (who was probably already half-crocked when E.T.
delivers his parting advice to "be good") and brief appearances by miniature
versions of C. Thomas Howell and Erika Eleniak.  There's a sexy new bathtub
scene, but no Harrison Ford, who played Elliott's school principal but has
yet to make it into any cut of this film (his then-wife, Melissa Mathison,
wrote the screenplay).  You can still enjoy rabble-rousing phrases like
"douche bag" and "penis breath," but you won't hear the word "terrorist" or
see the government goons wielding guns because Spielberg's testicles
ascended somewhere into his chest cavity after having and adopting kids of
his own.  There are a lot of cool point-of-view shots and, thankfully, no
sappy epilogue that left things open for a sequel.

As enjoyable as the film is, it's rather bothersome that E.T.'s trailer
declares itself to be Spielberg's "masterpiece," obviously forgetting those
two underseen little gems that won his Best Director Oscars (Schindler's
List and Saving Private Ryan).  Personally, I wouldn't even rate E.T. among
Spielberg's best sci-fi films, placing it well after A.I. and Close
Encounters.  Though it only took in a paltry $11.9 million during its
opening weekend (that might be good for a 5th place finish in this century),
the film eventually made about $400 million in the U.S. alone. It was
nominated for nine Oscars and won five, mostly in technical categories,
including John Williams' score which features the most annoying swell in the
history of modern cinema.  Most notably -and shockingly - it somehow bested
Das Boot in both the Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing categories.

2:00 - PG for language and mild thematic elements

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X-RAMR-ID: 31359
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 296529
X-RT-TitleID: 1006389
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 8/10