Kids = Gooood!; Adults = Baaaad!

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2009)

Sounds like bleating, doesn't it? Spot on! That is indeed intention to sound like the sheep in Orwell's "Animal Farm".
Frankly: All kids MUST love this. Simply because it's according to their thinking: emotional, straightforward, open-hearted, without monetary ambitions etc. The adults are, almost in a stereotypical way, the bad guys here: except for Elliot's mother, who must be regarded as a neutral person, i. e. neither 'good' nor 'bad'. Notable adult roles are the government people trying to wiretap the kids' dialogues; the doctors who don't listen to each other but each of them talking their sort of "I was the better medicine student" gobbledigook at the very same time. The scene with E. T. in the box and the doctors around him babbling hectically reminded me a little bit of the no less stereotypical "Planet Of The Apes" with a similar annotation of "doing experiments with the innocent and defenseless". That's exactly where Spielberg creates bias on kids so that they'll exclaim something like "A typical doctor's behavior!", since each one claims his diagnosis to be the best, and makes it happen: that is, his own thought of 'best possible medication' of the mysterious creature from outer space...
And furthermore, the (child?) viewer will summarize: merely kid's true love and friendship can even resurrect an alien from its 'death.' (I've put the quotes here to avoid spoiling too much)