Raiders of the Lost Ark was Steven Spielberg’s 50% down payment on owning the 80s and then the next year he paid off the other half with E.T. Why are there so many kiddie adventure movies in the 80s? Because E.T. made enough money to wallpaper every house in America with $100 bills. It’s Spielberg at his most Spielberg-y. Everything that people love about him or hate about him is here times fifty.
The good stuff: It’s clever, with strong performances from child actors, comic relief that blends in seamlessly rather than distracts and big moments that hit hard (with that ever-present John Williams score grandly beating its wings). Spielberg’s decision to hand the film over to the kids, deliberately not showing the faces of the adult characters (with the exception of single mom Dee Wallace) for most of the movie, also works. We don’t get any information here that we don’t need. We don’t learn any details about E.T. or where he’s from. These kids’ emotions are all that matters. And I think Spielberg really cares.
The bad stuff: Holy shit, is this sentimental! To call it a tear-jerker is an understatement. This film coerces the tears out of you. If you’re not crying, you get the feeling that Spielberg and John Williams are going to personally berate you in the theater lobby afterwards. The kids are cute and the alien is cute, and Spielberg squeezes that fruit for all its juice. When things get bad here, he shows us the kids’ tears like Lucio Fulci shows us gore. He makes ABSOLUTELY certain that we see it, short of using a zoom lens.
I’m wise to this film, but I can’t hate it. I’ll pass on buying the Blu-Ray, but I did catch a Sunday afternoon 35mm screening (of the non-CGI-revamped version, thank Gawd) at my local Alamo Drafthouse on a sweltering Texas August afternoon. I first saw E.T. in 1982 when I was 5 years old and today, at age 39, I saw it again in the same format. It was just like old times, except this time I was drinking a milkshake with bourbon in it.
Also, I had a strange parody movie playing in my head at the same time (let’s blame the bourbon).
My movie idea: Okay, Spielberg’s E.T. here is an astronaut, right? On his home planet, he’s probably among the intelligentsia. On Earth, he’s a sympathetic buffoon for awhile, but he picks up some of the nuances of the English language quickly and even builds an interstellar communicator out of a Speak ‘n’ Spell toy and aluminum foil.
HOW ABOUT a movie that reverses the roles? A human astronaut gets stranded on E.T. World. I’m talking a total Buzz Aldrin-type. On Earth, he’s a stiff scientist, a walking crewcut. On E.T. World though, he’s ADORABLE. The kids want to hug him and go on adventures with him. They want to rub his head and pinch his cheeks. He even blends in among their toys. No one has ever seen anything more cute than Buzz fucking Aldrin.
I think this could be big.