The marketing for J.J. Abram's Super 8 packaged it as a throwback to Steven Spielberg's adventure films of the 1980s, most notably E.T. and Goonies. The idea, presumably, was to evoke an era of less cynical filmmaking, a time when moviegoers and movie execs were less preoccupied with explosions and special effects and more interested in stories with some genuine heart, and to be fair, to an extent the actual film succeeds.
Set in 1979, the film tells the story of Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) a twelve-year old middle-schooler whose mom died in an industrial accident and whose dad (Kyle Chandler) the deputy of the small town of Lillian, is having trouble processing his grief. In the summer of that year, Joe joins his friends Charles (Riley Griffiths), Carey (Ryan Lee), Preston (Zach Mills) and Martin (Gabriel Basso) in making a short film which Charles, the director, intends to enter into a contest. They also recruit Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) a slightly older student from their school who is something of a heartthrob, and whose father Louis (Ron Eldard) is, for reasons that will be explained, indirectly responsible for the death of Joe's mother.
While the kids are shooting a scene for their film (a zombie movie), at a local train station, a train roars by, whereupon a pickup driven by the science teacher from their school, Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman), drives onto the tracks and into the train, derailing it and causing a spectacular wreck in the process. From the wreck, something strange emerges, but the kids flee the scene when several men show up.
The men, it turns out, are from the U.S. Air Force, and are led by one Colonel Nemec (Noah Emmerich), and upon securing the wreck they keep all local authorities in the dark, including Deputy Lamb, who immediately becomes suspicious.
The next few days are highly eventful as appliances, car, engines, pets and even people start to disappear. The Air Force takes a keen interest in the town of Lillian, and spend a lot of time poking around. Throughout all of this, Joe and his friends keep quiet even as they suspect it all has something to do with what they witnessed. Amidst all of this, a friendship blossoms between Joe and Alice, even as his relationship with his father deteriorates amid the increasing tension.
As things come to a head, however, Joe, his friends and his dad come to realize what's truly important to them and the extent they're willing to go to protect it.
Now, I've never watched The Goonies and I was seven when I saw E.T. so I really can't make the comparisons so many people are talking about, but based on what I remember of E.T., it was primarily a "boy and his alien" story, wrapped up in a family drama and leavened with sci-fi. There was lots of heart, with the sci-fi being secondary. I think that's an apt way to describe Super 8, which focuses mainly on the relationships between Joe and the other characters in the film, such as his dad, his friends, and Alice, and what makes it work is how honest it all feels. There's no schmaltz or syrupy sentimentality, even though there's ample opportunity to pour it on. Rather, J.J. and the actors, every one of them, capture the appropriate amount of emotion that the story dictates and just nail the tone perfectly. Special mention should go to leads Courtney and Fanning, who quite handily steps out of the shadow of her sister Dakota and delivers an absolutely luminous performance.
Sure, this movie may be an unabashed homage to Spielberg's 80s movies, but its warmth and genuine emotional resonance is something Abrams et al can honestly claim to have created on their own.
It's not, however, a perfect film and for me one of is weakest points is that which was touted as one of its biggest selling points: the creature.
This film was shrouded in mystery for almost the entirety of the period leading up to its release, with scant plot details being disclosed to the public. The shot of the creature punching the iron door of the rail-road car in which it is trapped is a highlight of the film's full-length trailer.
Now, the thing about mysteries like that is that at some point they have to be revealed. There is a digitally-generated creature; it does come onscreen late in the film, but its screen time, even after it is revealed, is so fleeting, and the precious few closeup shots of its face are so infuriatingly dark that at times I felt Abrams would have been just as well-served by having two eyes staring at the screen. It is with great disappointment that I note that there isn't a single full shot of it standing on screen. This could be down to many things: it could a ploy to get people to plunk down money for the DVD so they can freeze all the frames the creature appears in, or it could be evidence some kind of budgetary constraint, considering this movie was, by summer movie standards anyway, made on the cheap (though 2009's District 9 was reportedly made for even less, but still featured plenty of lengthy creature shots). To my mind, however, it just smelled like a cop-out, and seemed like Abrams wasn't ready for the thought that today's audiences, after all the hype, might just yawn at the creature's appearance. So the creature is basically all foreplay and a payoff that felt virtually like no payoff at all. If most of the digital-effects budget was spent on the train crashing, I'd say it's money wasted as such CGI mayhem is a dime-a-dozen nowadays. Sure, E.T. may have been a midget in a rubber suit or an animatronic puppet, but at least audiences SAW him. This creature is neither gentle and cuddly like E.T. nor murderous and marauding like the aliens in countless invasion films. Its story arc, in fact, is fairly interesting, but to my mind Abrams really screws the pooch by never letting the viewer get a truly good look at it. Considering the build-up of not only the film's marketing but also the narrative itself leading to the monster's eventual appearance, this isn't some minor quibble.
Still, as a love-letter to the 80s films, or at the very least to E.T., Super 8 works well enough. I took my kids to see it and was a little surprised to walk into what is definitely a PG-13 movie considering that our local ratings board, the MTRCB, gave it a "G" rating (probably because the protagonists are children), but it isn't Abrams' fault that the MTRCB is too stupid to realize that potty-mouthed pre-teens and the presence of a stoner isn't exactly "all ages" material. It's a more-than-decent afternoon at the movies, if one can tone down one's expectations of the creature.
I would recommend seeing this in a regular format rather than IMAX, though; save yourselves the money.
Score: 3.5/5
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