ET (U) returns to the cinema this week, 20 years after it became the biggest grossing film of all time.

Director Steven Spielberg has given the film some digital spit and polish and enhanced a few scenes but essentially this is the film that had us caring passionately about the fate of a round alien that looked uncannily like Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The film's special effects hold up well after two decades of development but the key ingredient to the film's lasting impact is the performance of the youngsters and how Spielberg built each shot around them.

Henry Thomas is perfect as Elliot, the careworn youngster suffering because of the absence of his father. It is he who befriends ET after he is left behind by his spaceship.

Elliot hides the alien in his toy cupboard while he works out what to do with him and the youngster and the space traveller begin to develop a close relationship.

Spielberg captures the innocence of their friendship, and the impact the interplanetary houseguest has on an ordinary family, brilliantly.

Drew Barrymore and Robert MacNaughton, as Elliot's sister and brother, and Dee Wallace-Stone, as his mother, react wonderfully.

The film's darker elements remain almost unaltered, except for a scene in which military scientists come looking for the alien. When soldiers form a roadblock the guns they carried in the original film have been replaced by walkie-talkies in a bid to make the situation less menacing.

You might think his deliberately heart-tugging set-up and storyline would seem a little schmaltzy and calculated after all these years but the film just oozes genuine charm.

If nothing else it reclaims the image of ET as a lovable space hero rather than a cynical BT ploy to get us to use our phone more often.