MovieReporter

Its Supes versus Nukes for the fourth, much-derided Superman adventure often slated for its repressing low-budget, inferior special effects and a whole wad of plot holes and incoherence – thanks no doubt to the extraction of a whole fifty minutes, much of the film's middle portion. Yet, among the wreckage are signs that there was a good film in here somewhere, as our hero struggles to decide whether or not to intervene in human history and the character's rather touching realisation that he is not just a visitor to Earth. A nicely-toned return to the Lois-Clark-Superman relationship also could have rooted the film back to its glorious predecessors - bar number three - but once Nuclear Man shows up and the film's story is cut in half, all promise and potential disappears from the project and the audience is left with a strictly mediocre re-tread of Superman II.

On one level, Close Encounters is an archetypal Spielberg film; breathless, thrilling and awe-inspiring. On another level, it carries a profundity and depth which is unparallelled even by some of his biggest cinematic wonders. One thing's for sure; its brilliant storytelling and a dazzling piece of film-making. The superb Richard Dreyfuss is the down-at-heel electrician who becomes obsessed with the UFOs that one night pop up all over his home town, embarking on a journey which takes him literally towards the unknown. Spielberg's childhood fascination with alien life keenly explains why a third-time director handles this epic with such bruava yet the director's own neuroses over his parents' divorce lends an understated but nonetheless effective layer to Dreyfuss' character. All this is tied into an old-fashioned mythical adventure plot line with many implications. Like Kubrick a decade earlier, Spielberg uses the liberty of science-fiction to deliver a visually stunning and three-dimensional piece of cinema.