An excellent family movie. Spielberg triumphs again!

Rating: 10/10 (29 January 2006)

I remember as a little 8 year old boy sitting down at my sisters and watching a dodgy pirate video of a well advertised film called E.T. The picture was jumping all over the place and hard to watch like most most pirated videos but through all that even as a little boy I could see how magical this film was.
Its essentially a film that appeals to the child in all of us and is about someone who is reaching out to be loved and cared for though despite being classed as different in a world that from time to time treats people with disdain just for being different. The story concerns a young boy named Elliot and his family who's live's are transformed when an alien being enters their lives having crash landed on earth. The story is then essentially about the aliens attempts to return home and this results in one of the saddest endings in cinema history (if you haven't seen it yet you'll need Kleenex) but E.T preaches nothing to no-one except to say that people (or in this case aliens!) should never be treated with disgust just because they are different. It is one of the best films I will ever see in my lifetime and though Henry Thomas's career has curtailed since it not only introduced us to Drew Barrymore but it also helped the careers of many of its stars and on the 20th anniversary DVD there is a great documentary that backs this up. All in all excellent.