One Paragraph Movie Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Eighty-fourth film: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a film that you can still understand even if you haven’t seen the first and second kinds. Virtually inseparable in juvenile memory from The Goodies’ Nutters Knoll and a true testament to the versatility of mashed potatoes, this is one of the most impressively underplayed UFO movies right up until the backlit, now-cliched ending. Mind you, little big-eyed nude aliens hadn’t become a cliché yet in 1977, a year that makes the special effects in this thing truly impressive. Plus any appearance of Teri Garr anywhere is a bonus, and Richard Dreyfuss is just a bloody delight to watch in almost everything, even when he’s manically landscaping the living room. Glorious. Four and a bit five-note earworms out of five.