One scene always struck me as being especially improbable: Dreyfuss is in his typical suburban backyard trimming his bushes or something, and he’s doing it in a goofy way that somehow attracts a crowd. That just wouldn’t happen in suburbia. Your next door neighbor might watch over his chainlink fence, and that would be about it.
Wasn’t that when he started throwing said bushes through the kitchen window? Resulting in the wife piling their kids into the station wagon and him climbing atop the hood?
The little boy who shouted, “Ice cream!” is one of my favorite movie moments, as well as hearing the tribal chant that matched the five tones on the piano, not to mention the expression on Richard Dreyfuss’s face when sculpting the mashed potatoes into Devil’s Mountain is just too damn fun.
And of course the meeting with the mothership: “… da da duh, BOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM!”
Teri Garr is responsible for more stiff socks than amylopectin. That is all I have to contribute this fucking old thread.
I duped my kid into watching this shit-fest tonight, allowing me to slip out to my friend’s house to borrow his chainsaw. Fuck, I hate chainsaws. They never start when you need them to.
It’s one of the few movies that I’ve seen more than once or twice along with Monty Python films, Herzog’s Nosferatu, Star Wars, Alien and a couple of cult French comedies. I think it’s an excellent movie that still holds up very well.
It’s not perfect, though and…
… I totally agree with this. There’s this bit in the middle that seems to drag forever.
Still,
The control tower scene
The boy’s reaction when he sees the aliens that are intelligently kept offscreen
The moment when Roy sees the Devil’s Tower on TV and understands at once
The arrival of the Mothership and the first communications
And the general atmosphere of awe and wonder make it one of my all time favourites.
In the 70s neighbors were much more likely to know each other and be friendlier so I would disagree with that.
Jaws was a great movie, until the shark jumped on the boat.
2001 was a great movie, until that stupid ending.
Blade runner was a movie that I could never get into.
Close Encounters should have started with the alien ship landing and went on from there.
I really don’t care for all the superhero movies. I read the comics ( I’m 65 ) but while the movies look great, I just don’t care to see them more than once. Maybe, it’s because I’m grown up now and I know about real hero’s.
Wow*!* You’re not gonna find a lot of support for those views here… 
I still love this movie, but as someone who was born and lives about 20 miles from Muncie IN I will always enjoy watching the police chase the UFOs over the hills and valleys of flatass Indiana.
Upon thinking about this thread, I’ve come to the conclusion that ANY movie that’s dependent on State Of The Art special effects is going to seem not so groundbreaking 25 years or so later. Especially if one’s not watching in in a theatre. Even a 60" flat screen doesn’t compete with that.
For me the best part was a good look at the TMB Avengers.
I think it is still a great movie. It was on TCM Friday night and I tuned into it partway through as I was making dinner. I poured a drink and watched it through and ate dinner later. I don’t think any other movie captures the sense of wonder that it did. It is still visually spectacular even if the flaws in the effects are more obvious with todays standards. Like many have said it was meant to be watched on the big screen, as a pre-adolescent I saw it in the theater in the original run and it was awe inspiring. I would love to see it on a big screen again sometime.
One of its strengths is that it does not ruin the mystery by telling anything about the aliens, other than they really like bright colourful lights and music. The best part of The Day the Earth Stood Still is before Klaatu takes off his mask. Attempts at detailed portrayals of aliens usually devolve into cartoonish crap. Its not about the aliens, its about mystery and wonder.
I really like how all this mystery is contrasted with plainness of bog standard suburban life of the mid 70’s, as discussed in this article by Keith Phipps.
I think Spielberg had learned this lesson with his horrible experience making Jaws. Because the mechanical shark never worked he had to shoot it ‘Hitchcock-ian’. IOW less is more. Just showing the dorsal fin or the pulled yellow barrels turned out to be, in fact, much more scary than showing a semi-realistic looking shark prop.
Close Encounters holds up today because even though half the film is a science fiction, special F/X, action-adventure about a secret govt project, the real heart & soul of the story is the Dreyfuss and Dillon characters. How they remained obsessed and compelled to follow an irrational feeling to its end, even though it is destroying their lives at the same time. It isn’t a story about extra-terrestrials, it’s a story about human beings.
I saw the film at its original release and was disappointed. In striving to convey the sense of childlike wonder at the aliens Spielberg went too far and made a childish movie. This wasn’t adult science fiction by any means. And of course with ET he went the whole hog and made a film suited only to the nursery.
Just introduced the raindrops to this movie and they loved it. I still got goose bumps on viewing it.
As has been said, it is a story about people. It is a journey of faith. One of the saddest parts for me is how Dreyfus is not believed, even by the woman he loves. She has no faith in him and abandons him.
Agree. My statements above still stand. I was profoundly disappointed by this flick.
You can say what you want about me missing the point, and it being about FAITH, but I stand by what I said. Spare me your CE3Ks and your Signs and any other movies that sell themselves as science fiction but are really about “Faith”. Aliens are a rotten metaphor for gods or demons.
Well, I don’t think Signs was ever meant to be a science fiction film. Sure the studio promoted it every way possible including as that, but I don’t believe Shamalama-ding-dong thought of it that way when he was writing/making it. But in the end what mattered most was that on every level, sci-fi, drama, faith, storytelling etc., it was a crappy movie (whereas Close Encounters wasn’t).
And I can’t see how aliens are a “rotten” metaphor for gods or demons. In fact, they’re the **perfect *metaphor for them. Un-Earthly (literally), intelligent but decidedly non-human, and variously omnipotent (fitting Arthur C. Clarke’s statement, “Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from ‘magic’”*).
Bumped.
Just found these deleted CE3K scenes - slightly jumbled and out of order: O'Hare Airport UFO deleted from Close Encounters - YouTube