Director: J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Mission Impossible III)
Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Kyle Chandler
Currently In Theaters
I loved Super 8. It more than lives up to its promise to bring back the feel of the early Spielberg films, like E.T. and Close Encounters. More importantly, even without these homages to earlier movies, the film holds up as an exciting and engaging thrill ride that everyone in the family should enjoy.
Super 8 follows the story of a group of kids who are trying to make a zombie movie. They decide to film a scene at a train station and witness an accident that derails the train. Following this, odd things start to happen around town and a government quarantine and later evacuation is ordered. The pure frame of the story sounds very similar to Spielberg's Close Encounters, but the overall tone of the film is different. While Close Encounters was focused on the psychological impact that an alien encounter had on a few people, Super 8's primary focus is on the relationships between the group of kids as well as the romantic relationship between the two main kids, Joe (Courtney) and Alice (Fanning). So I guess you could say it's like a hybrid of Close Encounters and Stand By Me.
This is where we get into the main complaint I've heard from people who have seen Super 8: it is too derivative of other movies. I agree that it is very reminiscent of other films, especially 80's films, and yes, I have already compared it to three other movies in this review, but I feel like this is exactly what Abrams was going for. Super 8 reminds us of these films because Abrams wants us to feel this nostalgia, and, although it's certainly not integral to a positive experience with the film, this nostalgia greatly enhanced the film for me. I can understand the arguments of those who dislike it, but I loved the homages.
I also loved the relationships between the kids. Joe and Charles (Griffiths) really feel like best friends, and their complicated friendship made a lot of sense to me. I've had best friends over the years who dated girls that I liked, and I'm sure I've done the same to them. I've also done things I didn't want to do simply because my best friend asked me to, like when Joe lets Charles destroy his model train for the sake of his zombie movie. I liked that they focused mainly on just two of the boys instead of all four, too. In reality, best friends are the people that you hang out with not only in groups but also by yourselves, and because Super 8 showed us this dynamic, the best friend relationship felt more realistic than in most films. I also thought that Joe and Alice's romance was captured well. Their interactions reminded me of my first love; the way that we didn't know what we were doing and how everything just seemed to be okay when we were together.
I can't justify a review of Super 8 without mentioning some criticisms, although most of them are minor and restricted to specific scenes. For example, Abrams's trademark lens flares make their valiant return here, and although they work (or at least aren't distracting) in most of the scenes, they are extremely overpowering during the train crash scene. The flares actually take up more of the screen during portions of the scene than what's actually happening does. This criticism wouldn't even be worth mentioning if that weren't one of the most crucial scenes in the entire film. Another problem I had with the film is that a lot of the secondary characters are stereotypical and flat. Alice's father is the stereotypical drunk, the pothead acts like a stereotypical pothead (although he did entertain me). There's far too many of these one-dimensional characters in a film like Super 8 that is otherwise nearly flawless.
I keep bringing up nostalgia in this review, not just in film homages but in my personal memories, as well. Films that can evoke this kind of response in me are special, and Super 8 is one of those. It isn't a perfect film, and it may be too reminiscent of other movies for some people, but Super 8 is one of the best films of the year and a film worthy of anyone's time.
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