"E.T. Phone Home"

Rating: Null/10 (29 January 2006)

"E.T. phone home." "E.T. the Extraterrestrial" is about an alien stranded on earth, and is found by a little boy. Of course, he wants to "phone home" so he can go back.
E.T. shows the classic emotion of love, loss and separation. While this is all very good, it seems like it only fulfills half of what I expected.
It starts off when an alien ship lands on Earth, and leaves a passenger behind. This alien is found by Elliot, a young boy. They form a bond, and become unusually connected.
"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" shows the classic emotions of love, friendship and the heart-shattering death and separation. Sound a bit complex for a family film, doesn't it? Well, it's really not all that. The emotions seem to be simplified, without enough depth to affect the viewer. To me, it felt as if they were merely introduced.
The story seems predictable. I think it's been told before with dogs. (I believe it happened in White Fang.) The only real difference between the dog stories and E.T. is that E.T. is on a much bigger scale. I mean, you've never seen dogs build such machines, have you? Yet, E.T. still seems to never fulfill what it seems to have promised. As I said before, the emotions aren't deep enough to let the viewer feel sorry or touched by the characters. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) The ending doesn't seem to be any surprise too. Films don't need surprise endings, but the ending in E.T. seems not at all emotional. The only thing that really helps the ending is a build-up of music. (END OF SPOILERS) One thing that made this film a disappointment washype. Yes, you've heard that word before, haven't you? I know that everybody thinks it isn't a good reason to dislike films, but many people are let down by a movie because of it. Let me explain -It was number 108 in Haiwell's top 1000 movies list.
-It got **** out of **** by a critic who gave seemingly lower scores to Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Joy Luck Club and Million Dollar Baby.
-It got 94 out of 100 on metacritic.com, which is enough to get it into the top 10. (I don't know why it isn't there.) - It was somewhere in "Four Star Movies: The best 101 Movies Ever Made" and around the 80's if I remember correctly.
It's pretty hard for a film to live up to all that.
The final flaw is that E.T. seems so short! I believe it's around one hour and 55 minutes long, but it seems only like 80 minutes. Of course, children don't want to watch a movie with the length of films such as "The Godfather" (even though adults will appreciate them) but the film never left me satisfied with a feeling of accomplishment.
Overall, E.T. was a huge disappointment. It has emotion, but it doesn't appear to have enough of anything to make the emotion work. The "touching" moments look almost too predictable, short and shallow to work. I know lots and lots of people will disagree with me, and I'm almost prepared to accept that.
Note: "The viewer" is referring to me.
Good: Well, it will be emotional for some.
Bad: The emotions don't seem to be very emotional. The film seems to have a very short running time. (Even though the box says that it goes on for over 100 minutes.) And, there's a hell of a lot of hype fir those who read the movie books a lot.
Feel free to send me a Private Message regarding this comment.