After twenty years, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is still one of the greatest movies ever made.

Rating: 9/10 (14 June 2002)

Great children's movies are few and far between, but finding a movie to be embraced as passionately by adults is even a rarer find. Steven Spielberg's artistic brilliance is more apparent than ever, finding the most wonderful nuances and marvelous visual imagery in every situation. The scene where E.T. stays home and Elliott is at school has greater poetic enchantment looking at it now than it did back then. Elliott starts to absorb E.T.'s feelings and imitates his physiological reactions. When E.T. gets drunk at home, Elliott gets drunk at school. Like something out of a beautiful romance film, E.T. watches a movie at home where he sees a big, romantic kiss in a 40's movie is on television. At school a tumbling wave of wind practically sweeps Elliott off his feet as he shares his first kiss with a pretty girl (Erika Eleniak). There are other eerie and oddly wonderful moments, like Elliott's first encounter with what he thinks is a goblin. When Elliott is able to lure E.T. into the house, they become friends. Elliott builds a rapport with E.T. by showing him his toys that he demonstrates is like his own tribunal council. At Halloween, E.T. thinks that a kid dressed up like Yoda is some kind of messenger from beyond the stars. When authorities finally locate E.T., they wrap the house up in contamination-protective plastic and bring in men in NASA suits in such freaky abrupt nonchalance that it feels like the worse fascist government invasion. Additional scenes for this twentieth anniversary include a scene where E.T. takes a bath and a scene at Halloween where the other kids (Robert McNaughton and Drew Barrymore) are trick-or-treating and the neighborhood is wild with teepee-making and other acts of anarchy. These scenes don't serve as a distraction like other inexplicable director's cuts, but are actually well-integrated additions. The visual effects are also enhanced and the film is also enjoying a re-mastered soundtrack. When E.T. was released 1982, the movie raked in more money than any film in history and was garnered with nine Academy Award nominations. The movie lost to Gandhi at the Academy Awards, which now looks like a crude footnote. Richard Attenborough's stuffy Oscar-winning biography of the Mahatma was a three-hour bore that never gave face to the human atrocities of the great British rule over India and chose long, long talk over putting visuals to action. Basically, it sanitized the story of Gandhi and the movie henceforth is a big, laborious textbook that couldn't even make simple timelines of its subject. E.T. was one of the greatest movies ever made, but how important was it? Looking at it today, the story of a young boy whose parents have recently separated, and is desperately lonely and looking for a friend  no matter where a friend may come from  is more poignant than ever. Additionally, thinking the film would flop, M & M's asked the producers of E.T. to remove their product from the movie. Reese's Pieces were then used, culminating in one of the film's greatest sequences. The magic of E.T. soars off the screen and the heart rejoices in that last great chapter. Elliott orchestrates an escape with E.T. away from the authorities and when those bicycles take off the ground, there isn't a greater voyage one could ever imagine. John Williams' music is the most magnificent score he ever created for any film. Spielberg's ending is maybe the finest moment of