Rent E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

As much as there is the huge love for this film, I just couldn't get on board with it - E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial review by TB

This is where, for many film lovers, I am about to committ heresy.

I had heard so so much about ET, all of it completely and utterly in awe of its achievements as a film but also as a piece of history. I had first encountered ET as a theme park ride in the US over 20 years ago, but obviously as I hadn't seen the film, not a lot of it meant anything to me. Finally, and especially after seeing it had been remastered, I rented it.

But from the beginning, I couldn't get on board with it and it definitely wasn't the movie I was expecting. For starters, the tone as it went on just jarred with me. It was very sweet to start with and the chemistry between ET and the kids was wonderful, but there was always something lurking in the background, kind of like a feeling it not working.

But then once the adults get involved and the whole house is taken over by the government/ET is then imprisoned and tested on, it just totally lost me. There was in many ways a mean streak that ran through it, particularly in reference to how ET is treated in front of the children. The medical staff are also portrayed very unsympathetically in certain ways.

Please don't get me wrong, I respect the puppetry and love how the film is shot (this is Spielberg after all,) but the tone of this just really didn't sit well with me. Far from being a film which was a sweet and welcoming tale, with danger faced, it was a morality tale which had far more nasty/off-putting elements than warm ones. And that's absolutely fine, I don't like films which are full of land of milk and honey saccharine sweetness. But this just doesn't work for me.

I know how much this film means to so many people, but as much as there were moving moment, for me it just didn't work