E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

The world of emotion that Steven Spielberg conjures up in E.T. could only have been created by a genius. How simply yet impressively he characterized the “bad guys” (ominous music + key ring), how he didn’t even need to look them in the eye and how he conceived everything from a child’s perspective...only a director who was born for this craft can do that. But...even though I have experienced E.T.’s story with all my heart and shed more than one tear while watching it, the film still lacks something more than just sincerely intended sentiment, something higher and something deeper. (20/05/2002)

My natural emotional defenses against cutely ugly windbags with funny voiceovers were not overcome, so I kept seeing a legless youth dressed in a costume. And it doesn't help that Williams has basically made an opera out of it, and the soaring loops don't let up for a minute throughout. But at the points where the real and memorable boyhood adventure shines through, it still works well, and I still experience the adult institutions as depicted visually in the film in exactly the same way. It's just a shame that instead of letting that suburban environment of broken families, junk food, broken toys, and unsupervised children bubble more in the background, the film focuses all its attention on the innocence of the protagonists, mirrored in the giant, virginal eyes of a friendly and harmless alien. (15/04/2019)

But yeah, as a family movie, there's not much to criticize about it, plus Spielberg has a knack for truly epic and memorable scenes. There are several of them right here. He also has a knack for the right actors. But I simply never got into "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial" and that hasn't changed at all even now. It's nice, but it just doesn't touch me. Maybe it's too cliché. (02/09/2014)

There is no other film in the world that so purely and beautifully shows the mood of its creator as E.T. Spielberg spent his childhood more or less without a father, as a rather asocial dork from the suburbs, with his mind drifting to the stars – those in the sky and those in Hollywood. E.T. is his personal confession, a sentimental return to a stage in his life when it was easier to tell important values apart and to define right from wrong. It’s a brilliantly directed story about the fact that important things must persist in the human heart, even though fate takes them away irretrievably. A film with so many inventive techniques (a good two-thirds are only from a child's perspective), real emotions and beautifully staged scenes (the arrival of the "bad guys" in the house and the play with lighting, the romantic kiss and the play with cross-cutting and character positions, the flight over the moon, etc.) that there is no time to breathe. A film with a huge heart and probably John Williams's best soundtrack. A film with a capital F that you have to love. You just have to… (28/06/2018)

That's right, when you don't remember anything and you're addicted to the digital atrocities of contemporary cinema (most of the FilmBooster users), you can't relate to a film like this. Taking inflation into account, it's the 4th highest grossing film of all time, but what makes E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial the most important film of the 80s is the response it got. A fairytale that brought everyone to tears in the cinemas, regardless of age (I witnessed it myself, even my tough father cried :o), at one time there was almost nothing else to talk about among people (only Sandokan and the series I, Claudius had a similar response in our country during the Bolshevik era), and a doll of E.T. was a must-have for every Czech family, and not only Czech – and I’m not even counting the failed movie clones that followed it. Simply, this film is a big phenomenon and anyone who says otherwise is lying. What’s most remarkable, though, is that it still works today (I have confirmation after today's Blu-ray screening). The way the whole film is essentially conceived from a child's point of view by the eternal child Spielberg, where we don't see the faces of the adults for the first two-thirds of the runtime (except for Elliot's mom, of course), the timing of each scene, and the gorgeous music by John Williams all make this film a unique affair that – unless you're a cynic, a jerk, or both combined – will bring you to tears at the end, too. (09/03/2014)