When he finds himself strange and foreign and confined to the ground, it seems that there is a young child will recognize him and become a new friend. The young boy Elliott brought the foreign creature to his California home in the suburbs, where Eliot introduces the creature called ET - as he is called a foreigner - to his little brother and sister Gerti. Children decide to keep it secret, but it does not last long when E.T gets sick, leading to government intervention and a miserable situation for everyone.
What's perhaps most amazing about E.T., what distinguishes it from many of the other fantasy films of its era, is its ability to put an audience under a spell of childlike wonderment without infantilizing it.
Captivating, endearingly optimistic and magical at times, Steven Spielberg's fantasy about a stranded alien from outer space protected by three kids until it can arrange for passage home is certain to capture the imagination of the world's youth.
Though marred by Spielberg's usual carelessness with narrative points, the film alternates sweetness and sarcasm with enough rhetorical sophistication to be fairly irresistible.
Spielberg would seem to be groping towards a virtual theology of space, space as Heaven, offering solace to a world which has foolishly renounced its traditional God but still aches to extend its own spiritual frontiers.
Spielberg's direction and Melissa Mathison's script never lose sight of the realistic, low center of gravity world of childhood, in which such marvelous adventures happen every day.
E.T. is essentially a spiritual autobiography, a portrait of the filmmaker as a typical suburban kid set apart by an uncommonly fervent, mystical imagination. It comes out disarmingly funny, spontaneous, bighearted.
