Both a classic for kids and a remarkable portrait of childhood, E.T. is also a well-made sci-fi adventure that captures that strange moment in youth when the world is a place of mysterious possibilities (some wonderful, some awful) and your universe seems somehow separate from the one inhabited by grown-ups. Henry Thomas plays Elliott, a young boy living with his single mother (Dee Wallace [Stone]), his older brother (Robert MacNaughton), and his younger sister (Drew Barrymore). Elliott often seems lonely and out of sorts, lost in his own world. One day, while looking for something in the back yard, he senses something mysterious in the woods watching him. And he's right: an alien spacecraft on a scientific mission mistakenly left behind an aging botanist who isn't sure how to get home. Eventually Elliott puts his fears aside and makes contact with the "little squashy guy," perhaps the least threatening alien invader ever to hit a movie screen. As Elliott tries to keep the alien under wraps and help him figure out a way to get home, he discovers that the creature can communicate with him telepathically. Soon they start to learn from each other, and Elliott becomes braver and less threatened by life. E.T. rigs up a communication device from junk he finds around the house, but no one knows if he'll be rescued before a group of government scientists gets hold of him. While the film sometimes overplays its "cute" card (especially in the flying bicycles sequence), Melissa Mathison's screenplay captures the way that kids interact with their friends and their siblings with remarkable accuracy, and kid-friendly director Steven Spielberg handles the story (and his younger actors) with remarkable empathy. Along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. often feels like Spielberg's most personal film, communicating a genuine respect for the world of kids.