I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind three times during the initial 1977 run, but when I saw it again on laser disc in the early ’90s I began to realize how consistently irritating and assaultive most of it is from beginning to end.
There are so many moments that are profoundly irritating or stylistically affected or impossible to swallow.
The air-traffic controller scene is an exception, and by far the best scene in the film. The opening Sonora desert scene is also first-rate; ditto the mother-ship arrival scene near the conclusion.
Othewise I can’t watch CE3K now without gritting my teeth. Almost everything about that film that seemed delightful or stunning or even breathtaking in ’77 (excepting the scenes I’ve mentioned) now makes me want to jump out the window.
That stupid mechanical monkey with the cymbals.
Those little toys that suddenly activate and start moving around.
The way those little screws on the floor heating vent unscrew themselves.
Bob Balaban deciding to shout out his confusion about the brand new WW II-era planes found in the Sonoran desert…”I don’t understaaaand!”
The elderly couple waiting for the arrival of remote alien ships on the mountain road in the evening…somehow they know the ships are going to fly by! And after the ships appear, Spielberg has the smallest of them flash a light beam at a McDonald’s sign.
The way those Indian guys all point heavenward at the exact same moment when they’re asked where the sounds came from.
Melinda Dillon going “Bahahahhahhree!”
That idiotic invisible poison gas scare around Devil’s Tower.
That awful actor playing that senior Army officer who denies it’s a charade.
The way the electricity comes back on in Muncie, Indiana, at the same moment that those three small UFO drones disappear into the heavens.
The shut-down, mule-like resistance of Teri Garr‘s character to believe even a little bit in Richard Dreyfuss‘s sightings.
It’s one unlikely, implausible, baldly manipulative crap move after another.
The worst element of all is the way Spielberg has those guys who are supposed to board the mother ship wearing the same red jumpsuits and sunglasses and acting like total robots. Why? No reason. Spielberg just liked the idea of them looking and acting that way.
This is a prime example of why Spielberg‘s considerable gifts don’t overcome the fact that he’s a hack. He knows how to get you but there’s never anything under the “get.”
