"E.T. I love you"

Rating: 7/10 (13 September 2000)

There's a certain age when film matters more than at any other time. A time when you lose sleep over Fenella the Witch from Chorlton and the Wheelies, or leave behind a worrying brown stain on the cinema seat after seeing the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. E.T. was one such time. Never mind that nowadays it's full of sentimentality and overdone comic setpieces, E.T. is 1982, and you're back to being a ten-year-old, trying to not cry when E.T. dies just in case your big sister catches you.
I've always had a slight problem with Spielberg's direction. Somehow, his films always seem too glossy, too clean. Even Schindler's List and Amistad had a clinical air, while the director chose Tom Hanks and Ted Danson to wage war in Saving Private Ryan. A case of the bland leading the bland? And so it is with E.T., possessing some very nice shots, but all put together with the maturity of an eight-year-old. Maybe that's the point. Spielberg loves referencing all the old films, such as Some Like It Hot, and, most obviously, Star Wars. If his childlike construction bores in Jurassic Park, then it's perfectly at home here.
E.T. is, like Speilberg's other great success, Jaws, manipulative and ultimately hollow. With it's $704,800,000 takings, the film is still the seventh most successful of all time, and it's to the producers' eternal credit that they never called for sequels. Imagine a world where we got "E.T. 3-D" or a story where E.T. travels from world to world in a personal vendetta against Michael Caine.
E.T. himself is a wonderful creation, though he does look worrying like Jack Nance's mutant baby from Eraserhead when ill. With his blinking eyes and expressive voice, coupled with incidental noises that sound like a crying baby and a kitten, he's a credit to the special effects team. Ageing less well are the floating special effects, be it E.T. making lumps of plasticine hover in the air, or the flying bicycles. They look like they were done on 50p and a roll of sellotape, but they were excellent at the time of release, and that's when it really mattered.
As an adult, you appreciate other things about the film, such as the family dysfunction, the reasonable performances, or the mental symbiosis between E.T. and Elliot. When I first saw this film I must confess I couldn't understand why they acted so alike, and thought the scene where Elliot copies whatever the drunken E.T. watches on the TV was contrived. Hey, I was ten, what do you expect? I was going to sit in the cinema musing over whether it's a religious analogy? E.T. dies, I sniffled, end of story.
Since this film, the cast haven't been able to recreate such a high-profile appearance, with Michael (Robert MacNaughton) only appearing in one cinema film since. Drew Barrymore, of course, since being told by E.T. to "be good", has appeared in Playboy, attended lots of open-minded showbiz parties (allegedly, allegedly) and gone on to be the most famous exponent of the film, appearing in Scream, Never Been Kissed, and many more. Her appearance in "Bad Girls" is quite ironic as her character in E.T., Gertie, spends most of the time wanting to be a cowgirl.
E.T. himself had a brief comeback to the high-life (or, at least, three of his brothers did) in a four-second cameo in The Phantom Menace. Since then he's been resurrected in England to plug a phone company. As for his sole starring role, as an adult it's still a pretty decently made, if cynical, picture. For the ten-year-old back in 1982, it's perfection.