Surprisingly, the film still holds up today - mostly because Steven Spielberg gets incredible performances out of the child actors. Henry Thomas is amazing in this movie. I don't think I've ever seen a child actor cry so believably on screen and I can tell it even moved my two remaining kids, who are still figuring out empathy because they kept looking at me and asking, "Are you going to cry?" With a lesser performance, their pestering would've got in the way of me having a genuine emotional connection, but Thomas' Elliott was so wholly absorbing that eventually I had to whimper "yes" to their incessant questioning.
Barrymore, too, gives a remarkable performance for a 6-year-old and I now know why. Spielberg convinced her that E.T. was real and that he was part of their family. When he was dying, that poor child thought that her adorable alien friend was truly dying. No wonder she turned to drugs.
Conversely, I found the performance of Dee Wallace as the recently separated single mother unusual and stilted. Perhaps Spielberg should've taken more care to convince her that E.T. was real.
Truthfully, there's no story more moving than a lonely child making an unlikely friend. It's a timeless tale and although it's highly problematic that Spielberg used a child born without legs and little people to play E.T., you can't deny it holds an important place in cinematic history - unless you're our 9-year-old who will go to her grave saying that E.T. is "ugly" and the movie, of which she saw approximately 60 seconds, "sucks".
HE SAW
The last time I watched it was the first time I watched it, 40 years ago. I was awed by the whole experience, but particularly by Elliott's family's dining area, with its low-hanging light, triangular table and banquettes, which, to me, looked exactly like a restaurant. I know I was deeply affected by that dining area, with its table, light and seating, because I have thought about it many times over the years, more than any other part of the movie, and because of the strength with which I remembered my childhood feelings when looking at it again last week.
Given the power of that memory, I'd assumed I had a good memory of the movie, but on second watching I realised how much of it I'd missed, not registered, or plain forgotten, since watching it as a 6-year-old: Elliott and E.T. felt each other's emotions; the Feds were on to E.T.'s arrival from the start; one of the Feds was sympathetic to E.T.'s plight and essentially let him escape; Elliott's mother was astonishingly absent from her home, criminally so, as you'd need to be to not notice the world's most famous alien living in your house and drinking your beer.
As I watched, I was tempted to point out these things to my kids, to make sure they were getting the full experience of one of the greatest family movies of all time but eventually I desisted, not just because they were getting annoyed with me, but because a good movie is a rich and complex experience, offering many possible readings, many hooks, many textures, many reasons for watching. You see what you want, rather than what the director intends. My kids may have missed things, as I missed things when I was their age, but presumably they also saw things I didn't, or at least things I didn't care about.
As a parent, you can't understand what your kids are going through - you can only make a guess, based on your own experiences and some informed hunches, for which they will ultimately resent you.
As a kid, I watched this movie as a story of wonder about the friendship between a boy and an alien, ending in a cool BMX chase scene. As a parent, I see it for what it is: A cautionary tale for parents, letting us know that our kids will ultimately care much more for someone they've known for five minutes than they will ever care for us.
E.T. is now streaming on Prime Video.
