Chris Kavan's Movie Review of Super 8

Super 8 Recaptures the Magic
Chris Kavan - wrote on 06/12/11

I guess being inundated with a steady stream of big-budgets, big stars and movies that usually prefer action over character and story have left me jaded with summer movies. Fun to watch? Sure, but they leave me feeling a bit empty after everything is said and done.

Yet with Super 8 J.J. Abrams has superbly channeled Steven Spielberg to create a film that has the heart of E.T., the sense of adventure of The Goonies with just enough danger to keep things moving. While it pushes the sentimentality a bit too far, for the most part this love-letter to sci-fi B-movies and early 80s Spielbergian entertainment is the perfect cure to mindless blockbusters.

Super 8 benefits from having an exceptionally talented young cast. Elle Fanning is the one girl in the group of boys, Alice Dainard, and can play tough and vulnerable in equal parts. Newcomer Joel Courtney likewise plays his role Joe Lamb - a boy who has lost his mother - with the right mix of coping with the loss and trying to move on with his young life. He and Fanning are the star-crossed lovers of the film - his deputy father considers Dainard's father responsible for his wife's death, meaning that any budding relationship is squashed by parents (not that it stops anything).

The reason for the two meeting together? That would be a for Riley Griffiths - Charles - and the movie he is making about a zombie investigation. Griffiths plays the young director perfectly - loud and pushy, yet you always get a sense all he wants it to be taken seriously. His timing is impeccable and he brings a lot of humor to the film. Likewise, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills round out the young cast. Lee is the firework-loving troublemaker - who plays the one zombie in the film who gets killed multiple times. Basso is the leading man detective who has the unhealthy ability to vomit in tense situations wile Mills plays the wide-eyed, perpetually stunned extra.

Our intrepid group is filming a pivotal scene for the movie. Charles has decided adding a wife to the film gives it more emotional heft and Alice has agreed - plus she has her dad's bitchin' ride. A train station shoot turns emotional, but the arrival of an actual train (Production Value!) lends an extra air of excitement. Too bad a truck decides to greet the train leading to the biggest action scene in the entire films - an epic derailment with explosions aplenty - don't worry, all the young charges escape with only dirt and minor scrapes (and the car does too!). Before the military can arrive, they find their biology teacher Dr. Woodward, has instigated the crash himself and tells them if they breath a word of what they've seen, they and their families are dead - heavy stuff.

The kids haul butt back home, where Charles laments the destruction of his camera while everyone else is just happy to leave with their lives intact. From they on, strange things begins to happen - the military descends upon the scene, collecting weird cubes. People start to go missing - including the sheriff, along with car engines, microwave and electrical cables. All the dogs high-tail it out of town and the military starts taking over certain frequencies. Now-promoted Sheriff Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) has his hands full with all this and simply doesn't have much time for his son, other than to tell him to keep the hell away from Alice. Of course, that doesn't happen.

Despite the craziness going on, Charles isn't giving up on his movie, using the train crash and military (Production Value!) to finish his project. When things start spiraling out of control, the military institutes the next phase to evacuate the town - meanwhile the footage that was shot at the station reveals that the train was carrying something decidedly not human that is responsible for the disappearances. When Alice herself goes missing, Joe is determined to get her back, even if it mean defying the military.

This leads to some intense scenes - the town under fire from malfunctioning military weaponry, breaking into the school for top-secret information only to be caught by the military - and they being ambushed by the extra-terrestrial and making another daring escape - only to wind up at the creatures lair when a final rescue mission is taken.

The movie is not shy about reveling in its 80s roots - from the Three-Mile Island mention, to Blondie and The Knack - and the brand new "Walkman" device - it's always reminding you what era we're dealing with. After so much build up, the monster himself is a bit anti-climactic, kind of reminded me a bit of the Cloverfield alien on a much smaller scale, but it was decent.

The only place the movie disappointed me was, like so many Spielberg films, it did tend toward the sentimental a bit too much - the ending itself was a little too much - but like I mentioned, I'm a bit jaded at this point, so that might just be a personal thing. It doesn't spoil the movie, just knocks it down a bit.

Make sure you stay for the credits where you can enjoy "The Case" (Charles' film) in its entirety. It's not to be missed and brought back fond memories of school assignment and various productions throughout the years. If you don't mind a bit of sentimentality, Super 8 is the perfect remedy to the summer blockbuster - it's a film with hear and character amidst the big set pieces.