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Critics Consensus: Close Encounters of the Third Kind is deeply humane sci-fi exploring male obsession, cosmic mysticism, and music.
Critic Consensus: Close Encounters of the Third Kind is deeply humane sci-fi exploring male obsession, cosmic mysticism, and music.
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All Critics (57) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (55) | Rotten (2) | DVD (17)
"Close Encounters" proves to be a magic act with dramatic interludes.
A film of incredible power and intensity. It is also, and ultimately, reassuring.
Spielberg's greatest work.
[Spielberg's] new movie is richer and more ambitious than Jaws, and it reaches the viewer at a far more profound level than Star Wars.
It must weather some bummy mid-passage exposition, but the movie survive its flaws triumphantly, evolving into a uniquely transporting filmgoing spectacle.
One of the great moviegoing experiences.
Alas, beneath the visual hanky-panky stretches a thin, hackneyed plot that was done to death in the SF magazines and third-rate films of the Fifties.
What the film is 'about', in a way, is its own illusionism, the process by which it creates a world we are invited to share.
40 years after the film's release, the only thing that's aged is me.
Spielberg's wondrous movie has remained its own thing, which is something of a miracle.
Time for another encounter.
It's a big ol' mess of a movie, but an extremely lovable one.
Spielberg's classic UFO film is the blueprint for the barely used naive, optimistic alien encounter genre. The reason why very few movies after this one even went this direction and rather blew up the White House instead is simply that it can't get any better than this. Starting out wonderfully mysteriously and disturbing, sometimes even scary, the film soon concentrates on Dreyfuss' character's own approach to the things he saw on the night sky and his visions to culminate in nothing less than the biggest Christmas three ball of movie history. This film simply combines all the assets of Spielberg's early work perfectly. Even the special effects still look pretty good 30 years later, maybe excluding the aliens. And John Williams' melody went down in pop culture history. A masterpiece.
Super Reviewer
This sci-fi classic has aged well, the graphics still look great by today's standards. But the story was slow and the characters unmemorable.
An enchanting film with great special effects, yet I feel reluctant to regard the aliens as peaceful and awe-inspiring since they do abduct people, even children - and it is also hard to accept the protagonist's selfish decision at the end without any concern for his family.
Though I understand how groundbreaking this film was for it's time, viewing it now had always been a little dull to me. The conclusion though is a breathtaking piece of filmmaking.
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