Admittedly, an engaging, enchanting film.  25 years later the performance of French film director Francois Truffaut as a foreign scientist, Richard Dreyfuss's obsession with mashed potatoes, and the sonic exploration of the octave and its overtones remain nestled in the viewer's subconscious, if not conscious, memory.  But in retrospect this film followed an era in which an idealistic generation, once devoted to social change and the immortalization of its own youth culture, had to settle for the latter of the two possibilities.  The "story" represents not just an escape from the banality of middle-class values but from responsibilities, conflicts, risky human relationships, and life itself.  Another capitalistic commodity pretending to renounce a way of life it in fact promotes and is inextricably bound to, "Close Encounters" is the first of many blockbuster "Third Kind" epics to achieve success on the big screen.  Play it with a good sound system.