"I'll believe in you all my life".

Rating: 9/10 (29 April 2011)

I'm reading the positive reviews of this film by those who were kids when it first came out, and I never realized what an impact it had on youngsters of the era. I guess that's because I was an adult at the time, and wasn't relating to it's appeal for nostalgic sentiment. Films like "The Goonies" and "Stand By Me" do a better job of bringing back that sense of camaraderie I had with the guys in the neighborhood I grew up with, when every afternoon was a ball game, and yes, tooling around town on our bikes was the only way to go.
It's said that a person's golden age occurs roughly between the ages of eight and early teens, and as an adult, one will look back on those years with particular fondness and longing. I can understand how "E.T." would have that effect on people who were kids in the early Eighties. Spielberg takes a sad sack looking alien of a creature and magically transforms him into a boy's best friend by virtue of creating a symbiotic bond between E.T. and young Elliott (Henry Thomas). As the story progresses, the other members of his family meet E.T. under different circumstances, each fraught with a mixture of fear and humor in just the right proportion. The goblin in the closet scene is bound to elicit a chuckle or two, and the trick or treat scene where E.T. as a ghost takes after Yoda is a blast. For those of us who like to stay young at heart, there will always be a place for films like "E.T", "Star Wars", and "The Wizard of Oz", along with those magical bicycle rides across the face of the moon at midnight.