The ending goes limp after the great set-up, which is the most lively depiction of a community rapt in suspense over hints of possible alien visitors since the original The Day the Earth Stood Still. Director Steven Spielberg gives us sweaty glimpses of the investigating government agency (led by Francois Truffaut!) and then lets it all hang out with Richard Dreyfuss’s apple pie family. Dreyfuss, alone one night, sees a UFO up close and receives a cryptic psychic message that drives him crazy to seek out the meaning of it all. This is notable as the place in which Steven Spielberg really becomes Steven Spielberg, displaying all that people love and hate about him. It’s a movie fueled on a sense of wonder with a steamroller John Williams score. The aliens aren’t the enemy here (though there are some scary moments); they’re a great unknown to be viewed with awed reverence, like one of the mystical artifacts in an Indiana Jones movie. That’s a strength and a weakness here. The good news is that this is kinetic, entertaining filmmaking overall from a director poised to take over the next decade. The bad news is that it’s a grand, thunderous step back for science fiction in the movies. It ends where most any good speculative writer would be getting started (people who don’t read science-fiction will probably like this better than those who do). There’s a lot of value in the human story here and this is far from a bad film, but it goes out cheaply. There’s not enough meat to the mystery to haunt us. It doesn’t so much end as it does drift away and it doesn’t tug enough at our imagination to make us follow. This movie is a beautiful breakfast, a rich lunch and then scraps for dinner.