The Critics say:
"It's a transcendent work of genre filmmaking."
-- Mark Palermo, COAST

"Spielberg's first real masterpiece, it deserved all the hearts it won -- and wins still, 20 years later."
-- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"The film is essentially the same as it was in 1982, which is to say a brilliant, flawless masterpiece."
-- David Cornelius, HOLLYWOOD BITCHSLAP

DBM says:
Only that master of popcorn trash, Steven Spielberg, could've come up with this clunker. Why all the fuss over a supposedly advanced alien race that looks like a cross between the Elephant Man and a ninja turtle? Should we care about this genetic half-breed that has life-threatening asthma and screams like an elephant being sodomised? I mean the fucking thing was going to die anyway, leave it in the garden shed. Plus the kids in the movie play Dungeons and Dragons. This should qualify them for Chinese water torture, not a potentially life-changing meeting with an extra terrestrial. I stayed awake during the 27 hours that this movie takes to unfold just to see Drew Barrymore naked, having hot lesbian sex with Erika Eleniak from Baywatch. But unfortunately they were both 5 during the making of this piece of shit.

Here are 3 different versions of the movie that would've been simpler and infinitely far more satisfying:

• Kid finds cute space alien
• Kid lures space alien home with M&Ms
• Space alien dies because kid is too fucking stupid to realise that chocolate is poisonous to space aliens
• Kid uses space alien's glowing finger to force Drew Barrymore and Erika Eleniak to have hot lesbian sex

• Space alien gets left behind on earth when his spaceship takes off
• Space alien immediately uses magical levitating powers to get back to his ship
• Steven Spielberg forces Drew Barrymore to have hot lesbian sex with Erika Eleniak for the remaining 114 minutes

• Space alien finds himself stuck with a dorky 10-year old who is so sad he isn't even allowed to play D&D
• Space alien changes into a flamethrowing head with legs, and visciously maims the kid, his mother and their annoying dog
• Space alien gets a lucrative guest spot on the Jerry Springer episode "I had hot interspecies sex with Erika Eleniak and Drew Barrymore"