Far too sloppy to be anything but a decent film

Rating: 5/10 (14 November 2001)

When I first saw this in '82, people everywhere were praising it. I saw a film whose structure and story fell apart if you asked too many questions. For instance:
-Elliot and his friends are being chased. They take the air nozzles off the bad kids bikes and the tires deflate!(This is one of numerous convenient things that happen in Spielberg films that would stop the film dead in its tracks if they didn't happen.) -If ET can fly, why didn't he just fly back to his ship at the first sign of trouble? (Another Spielberg convenience.) -One kid, being chased by bad kids, leaves the road on his bike and flies off a cliff into the top of a forest. He shows up in the next scene without a scratch.(Ditto. It was "cute.")
These things, and many others, are stuck inside a sappy, unconvincing, feeble story about an extremely ugly alien who mooches on a stupid, naive kid until the alien's parents come back to get him. This is the 2nd of a long line of spielberg films that are chock full of errors, logic laps, pathetic dialogue(especially if spielberg writes it.), and indifferent direction. His worst films are Hook, The Lost World, Close Encounters, and Goonies.
Rating: 6 out of 10. The rating is so high because it is fairly entertaining.