Okay. Supposedly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a classic. But what if I told you it’s not? And, what if I told you that not only should Close Encounters not be considered a classic, but that all of Steven Spielberg’s other movies about aliens — including the new film Disclosure Day — are, in fact, much, much better than Close Encounters? That would sound nuts, right? Well, the truth is out there, and the truth is Close Encounters doesn’t hold up.
In 1978, nearly 50 years ago, Close Encounters of the Third Kind became a watershed moment in cinema history. It broke box office records and demonstrated that a film about human emotions could be braided together with a paranoid thriller about alien abductions and UFOs. It’s also an overrated, incongruent, slogging mess, which, if released now, would probably not have garnered the praise and adoration it got in 1978.
