No matter how many times I watch this, it leaves me choked up. How can you not feel for ET and the kids when watching this? The movie itself does send me on an emotional roller-coaster and it's all because of the performances by Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore and ET. Yes, ET. It was an amazing achievement for Steven Spielberg to inject life and humor and loss into what is basically a animatronic puppet and give him a pulse and make him just as real as anything else around us.

This movie was HUGE for me when it first came out. I mentioned in my review for Close Encounters Of The Third Kind how I wanted to experience the same thing that Roy did in meeting Aliens. In ET, I got to live vicariously through Elliot (Henry Thomas). To me, that is me on the screen. It's how I felt the first time watching ET and it's how I feel now, 31 years later.

The story itself is fantastic in its simplicity of an Alien stranded on Earth, wanting to return home and getting help from a Boy he meets as they share a connection that makes them one and the same. But it's what they do with the plot that makes it so rich and compelling to watch. The way that the music by John Williams is itself a character makes this pure magic and one of the all time greatest movies ever made. Spielberg was brilliant in how he shot and handled the performances from the kids. To this day, I don't think he has ever been able to top this. I love the way he lit, shot and edited this film together, because if you are a fan of Close Encounters, you will see the similarities between the two, which makes perfect sense.

Everyone involved with this movie should be proud to be associated in one way or another. Props to Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, John Williams and Steven Speilberg. I highly recommend this as a Buy. The copy I have is actually The Ultimate Gift Set which comes with both film versions of ET, the CD Soundtrack, Bonus DVD, Book, Certificate Of Authenticity and exclusive senitype from the film itself.

FYI, the version of the movie that I watched tonight was the Original 1982 Version. Not the tainted 2002 Version. Ugh.