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Once rightfully regarded by critics as the one-man demolition squad that destroyed the ambitious, "mature" American cinema of the 1970s via the creation of product-sprouting lowest-common-denominator blockbusters, Steven Spielberg is now enjoying an oddly forgiving brand of revisionism. Gone or downplayed are past accusations that Spielberg's and fellow FX-obsessive George Lucas' phenomenally popular oeuvres were instrumental in dumbing down the movies, and even the entire culture. But regardless of cyclical crit-think currents, what is undeniable is Spielberg's near-sublime facility with all aspects of filmmaking, his unbeatable way with audience manipulation, and his sometimes jaw-dropping philosophical quirks.

And so, the 20th anniversary rerelease of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial allows one to observe with greater clarity that, bromides and revisionism aside, the film is a relentlessly unified vision of and advocacy for a pathological regression to a permanent preadolescent state. This suggests that, on some level, Spielberg is one seriously strange hombre. Then again, it made a mint when it first came out--and this version, revamped with added scenes, visually dissonant CGI "improvements," and digitally toned-down violence, handily pulled in $15 million its first weekend out, so what's that say about us?

For those who have been in a pop-culture coma for 20 years, E.T. is about an extraterrestrial innocent who gets lost in a magical forest somehow located near a suburban womb-world mostly shot from a child-level camera POV. There we meet Mary (Dee Wallace), who, in a glancing nod to veracity, is divorced with children. (Mary marks the first appearance of Spielberg's near-Oedipal obsession with distracted shiksa mothers, which he would take to its creepy/honest apogee in A.I. Artificial Intelligence.)

Spielberg pointedly introduces Mary's son Michael (Robert MacNaughton) by having him sing Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen." With his gloomy, cussed worldview, Costello represents the polar opposite of Spielberg's morally binary relentlessly chipper outlook. So it's no surprise that it's the younger, culturally unsullied Elliot (Henry Thomas) who gets to establish a telepathic bond with E.T., while younger sister Gertie (an unnervingly Drew Barrymore-like bambino Drew Barrymore) cutely caterwauls in the background.

Amid frequent references to icons of the ascendant Spielberg/Lucas permanent-adolescence culture of Star Wars and Jaws (TIE fighter models in the boys' rooms; E.T.'s amusing run-in with a kid dressed up as Yoda), E.T. falls ill when he can't "phone home." A group of scientists invade Mary's house, and their bumbling, insensitive adult technology temporarily "kills" E.T., but death turns out to be reversible as Elliot's love revives him.

As in Schindler's List,with its stupefyingly misconceived idea of trying to make an uplifting Holocaust movie, and Saving Private Ryan, with its overture of mass slaughter, Spielberg can't resist introducing the worst life has to offer and then deny its existence via last minute recanting. As is so often the case, Spielberg's aversion to a lasting commitment to the dark stuff denudes E.T. of the high stakes needed to make it more than emptily affirming fluff.

E.T. does contain one moment of real-life insight as Elliot and Michael, wanting to assemble parts for E.T.'s superphone, have to root through their disappeared father's stuff. But the scene is short, feels out of place, and is ironically akin to something out of one of those relatively grim '70s films E.T. did, in fact, help vaporize. But again, the film demonstrates the difficulty that Spielberg, a member of the first generation of movie nerds who grew up on TV reruns, has integrating any lasting conflict into his films. (Think Roy Neary's dinnertime meltdown in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and its weird lack of lasting effect on that character's horror-struck family.) The honestly-earned, uplifting story arc of a film like, say, Bambi, in which devastating scenes/themes of mortality are eventually transcended by acceptance, resilience, and spirit, seem beyond the director's interest or comfort level. When delivered with Spielberg's impeccable skills, the appeal of such a relentlessly prettied-up world is undeniable, although there's no real reason to admire it any more than any vehicle for fleeting instant gratification.

Spielberg returns again and again to his it's-so-much-better-being-a-kid message with the skill of a cravenly brilliant Peter Pan obsessive. Moderately troubled Mary, who'd be at home in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, cannot even see E.T. until she embraces childhood by dressing up like a goofy cat-woman for Halloween. But it's E.T himself whom Spielberg utilizes as his ultimate trump card for the film's adult-baby-world paradigm by making him (her?) both an ambassador of unfettered emotionality and a member of a superior race that's somehow mastered high-tech stuff like intergalactic travel.

By E.T.'s end, all concerned have been whisked safely away from the threatening shores of adult concerns and effectively reconstituted as honorary children, staring in awe as the mothership whisks the alien--now supporting a somewhat last-minute Christ-substitute gloss--home. But it was an older and wiser Spielberg himself who eventually debunked the dreamy infantilism of E.T. in the box-office failure A.I. Doomed to live out eternity as a helpless boy, the film's titular robot child has only the memory of a mother who never was to fill a perfect house packed with empty consumables while an ossified world of broken dreams falls slowly apart outside.