Just saw this for the first time

Well, your opinions are held by nearly nobody, so it's pointless to say it's overrated. The film is praised even more today than 40 years ago, and represents its period in the development of the Director probably better than almost all Spielberg films since. The effects are still impressive today, and better-utilized than 'Star Wars', which, in 1977, pushed film effects to their limits. Your being 'bored to tears' by the relentless, pounding pace of action of this film says more about your attention span than it does about this film- or are we confusing this with '2001: A Space Odyssey' now'? Because that was quite a different film, and didn't benefit from a John Williams score. In 1977 Spielberg was still riding high on the success of the more down-to-earth 'Jaws', a totally realistic genre film about a rampaging 20-foot long killer fish feasting on quaint maritimers and their kids. The rubber shark looked so bad footage of it was edited down to the point of a metaphor, a fin accompanied by Williams' deathless ostenato figure (once again, the Williams score). Yet Spielberg decided to do his 'Great Sci-Fi' film, an hommage to films he grew up with, like 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', and 'This Island Earth' (had to throw that one in). The film, with its barely-up-to-the-struggle Everyman, this time squaring off against a giant shadow cruelly projecting itself over the countryside outside Muncie, Indiana, scooping up annoying kids as it goes, was a critical and financial success, and I bet if you ask the director, it's STILL on his resume. Definitely not one of his worst movies, that honor belongs to '1941', the film that turned World War II into a screwball comedy... just don't confuse that comedy about WWII with all the hundreds of other films that belong to this genre... they're all in black-and-white, so they're easy to differentiate... unless you're color-blind. It's not wrong to dislike a movie. But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with it.

Interesting, I'm watching it for the first time as a grown adult (last time I saw it was maybe when I was 8 or 9) and, while I don't think it's one of Speilberg's best films, it's definitely not a bad film or one of his worst. Maybe a solid 7/10 at worst but I do agree it's too long. The effects hold up very well. Not sure what effects you think are particularly bad, especially in 2013, when you made this post. Some of the special effects would still be well received if they came out in movies made today.