If there is such a thing as a zap-and-zowie school of filmmaking, Steven Spielberg is its prime example….

From the very beginning, Spielberg's speciality was shock. Sex not at all, violence to some extent, and plan shock above all…. While grandly orchestrating cars and helicopters, Spielberg left the human elements of [The Sugarland Express] on a level that was both primitive and factitious. About Jaws one can say at least that however worthless the scenes on land were, those on or in the water were gripping.

Close Encounters is science fiction, a genre that shows signs of becoming a favorite form of cinematic escapism for reasons that are not far to hand…. [Machines], gimmickry, and special effects obviate the need for such more complex human elements as characterization and dialogue, and make things easier for the new breed of illiterates both behind the cameras and in front of the screen…. (p. 7)

[I could tell you the plot or list the absurdities]—which, in this case, comes to be same thing—but why betray the few feeble surprises the movie holds? Let me stress merely that it is not so much a matter of a number of holes in the story, as of a story—and this may be a first—being built entirely out of holes. A friend and I counted, in a matter of minutes, some thirty or forty of them….

Under the many layers of contradiction, however, we come to the bedrock of solid nonsense. Thus, for instance, the visitors, despite their superior intelligence, are unable to crack the Earthlings' language…. The whole business of taking people from earth to the visitors' domain—either for thirty years, as in the case of the wartime aviators … or else for a few days, as in the case of Barry Guiler—is never made remotely clear; but, then, what is?…

In Spielberg's lopsided world, people and their relationships do not begin to make sense…. [People] have been turned into objects, while objects are accorded maximal importance. The movements of machines and gizmos of every kind are made volatile and manic: they zoom at us with exaggerated suddenness and fury. Almost every scene is treated as if it were a climax…. Only with extreme reluctance does the director-screenwriter accord us a few scenes of relative quietude; before we know it, all zap and zowie breaks loose again.

This is not to say that Spielberg isn't capable of shooting certain climactic scenes with genuine ability; but after all those bogus climaxes, all that fake excitement, the real thing begins to look specious and worse yet, anticlimactic….

To clarify everything and make things cohere would have required, as Spielberg remarked in a press conference, a four-hour movie instead of the present one, slightly over half that length. Yet four hours of sense would go by faster and more pleasantly than two of nonsense. Moreover, I doubt whether anyone who could make a shorter period this nonsensical could have made much more sense at any length. Spielberg which in German means toy mountain—may indeed have made the most monumental molehill in movie history, conveniently cone-shaped to serve as a dunce's cap for an extremely swelled head. (p. 8)