Fallen to earth

Phone home! Phone home and tell the folks to go to the cinema to see the re-release of ET. Steven Spielberg's charming extra-terrestrial is doing rather disappointingly the second time around.

At a time when Hollywood is supposedly embracing re-releases, the 20th anniversary edition of ET the Extra-Terrestrial took just £4m from 26 international territories over the Easter weekend.

On its original release in 1982, ET won four Oscars from nine nominations, grossing £200m in international box office receipts. Perhaps it was something to do with timing. After all, some of the more fanciful film critics have likened Spielberg's classic to the story of Jesus, with ET's first words – "be good" – echoing the sermon on the mount, and his miraculous ability to heal Elliot finding an obvious Biblical parallel.

Maybe ET couldn't compete with the real thing. Or perhaps we have simply lost our taste for whimsical sci-fi, especially when it is regularly repeated on television.

Either way, the appealing alien has met his match in the shape of Ali G in Da House, and has become just another of the Staines gangsta's victims.