Intergalactic Tear-Jerker

"IF YOU BELIEVE in fairies clap your hands. Do you believe in fairies, Gertie?" Moon asks her pre-school daughter at bedtime. Mother claps her hands, hoping to instill in her child a normal preadolescent faith in a non-existent fantasy world where mythical beings prance. Gertie enthusiastically pounds her little mitts together. Unlike Mom, she knows that in her closed is a small, brown, baggy-skinned, wide-eyed creature from outer space.

E. T., the tale of an extra-terrestrial abandoned by his flying saucermates and the children who care for him, is for kids and for everyone who wants to be a kid. It takes an old theme-that adults, for all their wisdom and experience, fail to appreciate what is truly important character finds himself stranded on this planet, in suburban California, no less. Scientists-adults-have scared off the rest of his intergalactic expedition. After days of successfully avoiding these intellectual predators, E.T. discovers Elliott-probably about 10 years old-who takes him home and takes care of him.

E.T. learns about Earth through a child's eyes, a perspective director Steven Spielberg emphasizes by filming parts of the movie at Elliot's height. The waddling little fellow lives among the stuffed animals, puppets and toys in Elliott's vast collection. He first learns to speak from Big Bird on Sesame Street. And his initial introduction to human society is Elliott's monologue about the artifacts on his desk. These are little men...This is Screedo, and Hammerhead, and Walrusman, and Snaggletooth...They can even have wars. (Holding up a ceramic peanut bank) This is a peanut; you eat it. But you can't eat this one. You put money in the peanut...(Playing with a Corgicar)This is a car. This is what we get around in... "E.T., still a rookie, tries to eat the car.

A charming relationship develops between the creature, millions of miles away from home, and the child, fatherless and ostracized as a weirdo by the gang. Elliott (Henry Thomas) makes his new friend feel at home in the toy closet, feeding him with periodic refrigerator raids. The two become so close that they even begin to feel the same things. When E.T., upstairs, accidentally opens an umbrella, Elliott, downstairs, jumps in surprise. The next day E.T., left home alone, discovers the wonders of earthling beer. Elliott, at school, gets drunk. In fact, Elliott, with his teenaged brother and little sister, Gertie, succeed with childlike grace where modern science would probably have failed, keeping an alien alive and helping him get back in touch with his species.

IN CONTRAST to the kind, caring kids, there are two kinds of adults in E.T.: MOM, the humorless, unobservant adult, abandoned by her husband, has enough problems holding a job while raising three kids. She is too busy and perhaps too mature to notice E.T., even when he is literally under her nose. And there are the cold, calculating adults, represented cloddishly by the nameless, faceless band of NASA men. They are not only aware that E.T. is in town, but also want to trap him and do God-knows-what to him for their own purposes.

The film's message is underscored inadvertently by the players creating the story. In general, the adult actors perform adequately at best. Dee Wallace, as the mother, appears too confused herself to carry off the confused parent role. The NASA hit squad pops up awkwardly without regard to the rest to the plot. What little acting the white-suited villians do is wooden and stereotypical. But the kids. They are adorable, and appropriately, they make the show.

That, unfortunately, leads to the major flaw of the flick. While E.T. is certainly entertaining throughout, evoking emotions by the gallon, you can't help but feel somewhat cheated at the end, as if coming down from an artificial high. For an adventure, there is very little plot and not much character development. Like Spislberg's first blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the story is strung along by special effects and cute tricks. The scenes designed to choice you up accomplish their end because the kid is so charming, not because you really care about what happens.

Chargling that the massage is worn, the acting pedestrian and the storyline weak should not imply that E.T. fails altogether. It effectively accomplishes its modest goal: to entertain on a warm June evening. Unlike the other half of Spielberg's summer twinbill, Poltergeist, which is supposed to scare, while conveying big statements about the origins of fear and modernism--fumbling on all counts-- K.T. succeeds in providing two hours of carefree fun.