Written by Linda
June 11, 2011
Super 8 literally feels like you are watching a summer movie that you somehow missed when you were a kid.
Watching Super 8 is strangely comforting and a little weird, like slipping on an old pair shoes that are totally familiar, but from another time and another place. Knowing that Super 8 is NOT a movie directed by Steven Spielberg during his youthful heyday, you suddenly notice that director J.J. Abrams reproduces that nostalgic late 70's/early 80's innocence with such love and care, that he seems careful to not take a misstep. Still, Super 8 (which IS produced by Spielberg) is loads of fun.
It's is the summer of 1979, and a pack of 'tween boys are making a super 8 zombie movie, hoping to win a local film festival. The boys work on it with earnestness and gusto, until a gamechanger enters their lives. If this were reality, the gamechanger would be the inclusion of a GIRL named Alice (Elle Fanning) as their zombie-movie love interest. Dynamics among two of the boys are thrown asunder, as right-hand guy Joe (Joel Courtney) and director Charles (Riley Griffiths) start bickering. But the real gamechanger is when the kids are filming a scene at a train platform in the middle of the night and witness a train derail in a most spectacular crash. Things are suspicious from the start. Joe saw a pickup truck deliberately drive onto the tracks to cause the accident, and what up with the mysterious cargo? A bone-chilling warning has the kids fleeing the crash as scores of military trucks swoop in on the wreckage to seal off the scene.
To give anything else away would be to ruin the fun of Super 8. It becomes clear that whatever was on that train was no ordinary cargo. People in the town start disappearing. Family dogs literally run for the hills. The kids start sleuthing, piecing together information about the mystery that is quickly becoming more and more dangerous.
The young actors in the film are great. Elle Fanning, unsurprisingly, shows up to give the movie some emotional depth (those talented Fannings are multiplying!). Joel Courtney is a charming and affecting lead--and boy can that kid make his eyes well up at the drop of a hat. Shout outs must also go out to scene-stealing Ryan Lee, as Cary, the pyro of the bunch (didn't we all know a kid like that?), and Griffiths, a Joe's jealous but loyal best friend. Alas, the adults in the film don't fare as well. Kyle Chandler, as Joe's Deputy Sheriff widower dad, and Ron Eldard, as Alice's drunken and morose father, are a bit wasted, but do their best to add some depth to their throwaway characters.
As you enjoy Super 8, it literally feels like you are watching a summer movie that you somehow missed when you were a kid. Super 8 plays like the missing link between E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies. Unlike Spielberg, J.J. Abrams' film has a lot more scares (my friend jumped out of his seat half a dozen times at least, which began to be as entertaining as watching the film) and a lot more kid-swearing. But also unlike Spielberg, Super 8 didn't make me cry, though it certainly tried to wring emotion from the audience with it's Spielbergian ending. But as long as the master isn't making movies like this anymore, Abrams' version will do just fine.
