E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – Review

Just between you and me, I always hated E.T. as a child. There were various reasons of course, but when it came to the Spielbergian movies of my youth, I was way more of a Jaws or a Raiders Of The Lost Ark kid than I was tales of small, squishy aliens providing unintentional comfort to children to divorce. Beyond that, I always found Spielberg’s most family orientated movie strangely manipulative as the celebrated director ruthlessly tugged on those heartstrings in order to guarantee those strategically placed waterworks. I hated the confectionery product placement, I hated the kiddie-centric plot and I especially hated that cutesy rainbow trail that bloody Christmas bauble spaceship left at the end – however, while I was obviously missing that spark of child-like wonder that E.T. runs on, the adult me feels like he should step in and have a discreet word.
While I’ll always champion Spielberg’s earlier, harsher stuff, there’s no real argument for hating on E.T. when it truly is a masterpiece of family filmmaking that’s (brace for unnecessary pun) out of this world.

A Californian forest is bathed with otherworldly light when a race of short, wrinkly aliens touch down on our planet to collect plant specimens, but when one of their number is enticed away from the group by the sparkly lights of a human neighbourhood, he’s separated from his ship when goons from the U.S. Government rock up to nab themselves a bit of UFO action. While the aliens haul ass back into space for safety, their abandoned member eventually finds shelter in the shed of belonging to the broken family of Elliott Taylor, who are still processing the fact that the patriarch has recently bogged off to Mexico with his new lady love.
While their first meeting illicts stark terror on both of them, a curious Elliott manages to entice the little alien – who soon obtains the acronym E.T. as a name – into his house with a judicious use of candy and before you know it both he, his elder brother Michael and his younger sister Gertie have welcomed the extra-terrestrial in their family while keeping their overworked mother, Mary out of the loop. Soon, something strange (or even more strange than chilling with an alien) starts to occur when it seems that E.T. has an array of powers such as telekinesis, the ability to heal with a touch and he also bonds with Elliott at a near emphatic level which allows one to feel what the other is feeling. But while the kids help E.T. to construct a communication device to “phone home” it seems that those government goons are getting ever closer to locating their otherworldly quarry.
Worse yet, the link between E T. and Elliott causes both to get disastrously sick and even brings the former to the edge of death’s door. Can the Taylors help heal E.T. and get him home before untold children in the audience get hopelessly traumatised beyond compare? Not even E.T.’s glowy finger could cure that much damage…

To address my earlier, childish accusation about whether E.T. is manipulate, it’s obvious that the true answer is: yes it is – but only because all movies are manipulative in their own way. Horror movies are manipulative when they need to scare you, comedies do the same thing when building a joke and unleashing a punchline. Even action movies toy with your emotions when they’re whispering their sweet lies into your ear when it gets to to fully buy into a battered hero defeating a virtual army all on his (or her) lonesome, but when I was younger I just only had an issue with it when it was trying to get me to open my heart. While this suggests a trip to a child psychiatric was in order back in the 80s, its ironically perfect that it was never discussed as – among other things – E.T. may be the ultimate poster child for 80s parenting.
It’s a famous antidote now that Spielberg made E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as a way to process the divorce of his own parents and there’s a huge number of tells to be found as Dee Wallace’s overworked single mother frantically slaves to raise three kids while not noticing an alien literally running under foot. Kid’s movies at that time would rarely tackle such underlying themes (although you’d be hard pushed to find a future Amblin movie that didn’t contain an imploded marriage) and stuffing this void with an adorable, candy nibbling alien just prove how much of a visionary Spielberg is. In fact, for the first two thirds of the film, he subconsciously puts you in a kid’s mindset by going the Peanuts route of stubbornly refusing to show the face of any adults other than Dee Wallace, and the film also takes its time to indulge in a bit of innocent rebellion in a scene where E.T. plods around an empty house in a dressing gown and day drinks like a dead-beat dad (so relatable) only for the linked Elliott to get the boozey after effects at school and steal a kiss from a shockingly young Erika Eleniak.
The kids are excellent and well handled – never falling too far into annoying and stiring up genuine empathy with Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore managing to impressively hold the screen in their roles as lead and comic relief respectively.

However, possibly the most impressive thing about E.T. is E.T. himself as Spielberg’s seems to have taken all the shit that the malfunctioning shark from Jaws put him through. While he doesn’t play “hide the alien” as much as he was forced to with Bruce the shark, he makes every full shot of the title star count, utilising silhouettes and close ups of E.T.’s limbs to stop Carlo Rambaldi’s animatronics work from getting enough overexposure that the little, stubby legged bugger loses any of his emotive power. And what power it is. Despite unavoidably looking like a rubbery turd in a handful of shots (it was 1982, after all), for the most part, you quite happily buy that E.T. is a living, breathing being hook line and sinker, chiefly because you want too. Yes, he may be responsible for every single unnecessarily adorable alien sidekick that appeared in his wake (Mac & Me, I’m looking at you, you malformed little shit), but the sheer amount of instantly iconic imagery that Spielberg weaves around him is undeniable. From the glowing finger and the warm throb of his heart in his chest, to the unfeasibly savvy sight of E.T. taking refuge in a pile of cuddly toys, Spielberg seems to just know how to perfectly manipulate us into falling into childlike adoration – Hell, the timeless shot of Elliott and E.T. framed by the moon as they fly by even became the logo for Amblin Studios for crying out loud.

Don’t let the family film status fool you, E.T. The Extra-Terrestial may be a more overtly saccharine alien movie than Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, but that doesn’t mean that Spielberg isn’t playing to win. A near perfectly constructed film that guides you expertly through a rage of emotions until you get to the lip trembler of an ending, no other movie can expertly make you feel things the way you did as a child more than Steve’s heartstring plucking opus. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and speak to my child self to shut the Hell up about things he doesn’t understand.
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