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| Tookey's Review |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
1977 |
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| Genre: |
DRAMA
SCIENCE FICTION
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
135 |
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A repairman, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), becomes obsessed with the idea that aliens are about to land near a large mountain.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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It’s confused and confusing, lacks dramatic conflict, and has a tiresome hero. Much of the plotting doesn’t bear close inspection - especially if you try and work out what on earth the aliens are hoping to achieve, or why our hero and heroine climb up Devil’s Mountain when the base for the UFO landing is so clearly at its foot - and the characterizations are superficial in either version. Even so, this is a classic film because of its special effects, optimism and peculiarly childlike sense of wonder. It’s also a memorable case study of obsession, and there’s an obvious parallel between Neary’s faith in his vision and the single-mindedness of a film-maker like Spielberg.
If you have a choice, see the Special Edition. Sixteen minutes of film have been removed from the original, seven minutes of unused footage reinstated, and six minutes of entirely new material inserted. Spielberg’s revisions excise boring bits from the middle, make more sense of Neary’s deteriorating relationship with his wife (Teri Garr) and take us inside the alien spacecraft at the end.
“The Special Edition would have been the first film had I two more months. I didn’t have the time and so, as a result, the entire second act of the first film is for me very unsatisfying. Specifically, the pacing between Richard’s story and the Francois Truffaut story, and the correlation, symbolically, that one has toward the other is much more deliberate in the Special Edition than it is in the original version.”
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| (Steven Spielberg) |
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