Word: spielbergisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante make Gremlins a scary summer...
...might get an argument on that description from Steven Spielberg, the fabulator of that alltime blockbuster and-surprise!-an executive producer of Gremlins. "If I thought this movie was close to E. T.," he claims, "I probably wouldn't have become associated with it." As it happens, there are plenty of similarities in plot and tone between E.T. and Gremlins: a sweet, lonely boy in a matriarchal family in a near idyllic small town meets a gentle, otherworldly creature who becomes his charge and his protector. But these comparisons are mainly for exegetes and archaeologists, for by mid-film...
...multiply and maraud, the gremlins are distracted by the slightest opportunity to forget it all and have fun, whether that means ransacking a department store or catching a midnight matinee of Snow White and singing "Heigh-ho" along with the Seven Dwarfs. "If they could speak English," notes Spielberg, "they'd probably say, 'Let's party!' It's how they party that can be hazardous to your health...
Snaking through the movie is a familiar Spielberg theme: the disappearance, and then the welcome return, of children. It illuminates his three most personal movies (Close Encounters, Poltergeist and E.T.) and affirms his belief in movies as a Mechanized Fountain of Youth. Toward the end of Temple of Doom, Indiana leads hundreds of enslaved Indian children out of an underground quarry and into the light. Spielberg means to be another kind of Pied Piper: leading grownups into the darkness of a moviehouse to restore, for a couple of hours at least, the innocence of childhood in all its wonder...
This is brilliance that rides on narrow-gauge tracks. One is tempted to demand of these two spectacularly talented film makers that they raise their sights beyond the Saturday-matinee refreshment stand. Lucas seems happy to produce pictures that affect the heart rate but not the heart; and Spielberg, when working with Lucas, concentrates his nonpareil directorial gifts on energizing each frame, keeping his boss and the customer satisfied. But perhaps the young moguls can brush aside such criticism. They know what sort of edifice they want to build. You don't fault a theme park for not being...