Super 8 Movie Review
Super 8 Movie Review
Written and directed by JJ Abrams, produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Kyle Chandler.
|
“They will kill you. Do not speak of this or else you and your parents will die.”
Those are the famous, but not last, words of accident victim Woodward (Glynn Turman). At first it appears that the babbling, bloodied man is deranged but it turns out that Woodward is the key to the deadly train wreck witnessed by 13 year old Joe (Joel Courtney) and his pals. A souvenir stolen from the site of the derailment — a strange, spiky "white Rubik's Cube" — turns out to be not the plaything of puzzle-lovers, but is an essential building block to a secret space ship.
But the train wreck doesn't happen right away. Harkening back to its own time period (the late 1970s), Super 8 takes sweet time to build characters and to steadily sow story. With sci-fi icons from the old (Steven Spielberg) and the new (JJ Abrams) regimes coming together to present this bona fide summer popcorn blockbuster, Super 8 simply can't go wrong. What might be called an "instant classic" it follows in the faded footsteps of beloved tween flicks like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, and Stand By Me.
We meet our hero, 13 year old Joe (Joel Courtney), on the day of his mother's funeral. While his friends and peers speculate on the condition of her crushed corpse in the closed casket and whether or not she's got zombie potential, Joe's father and family are appropriately grave. Somewhere between the tears and the gallows humor, it's revealed that this summer, the kids plan on making a movie on their Super 8 camera. A zombie movie, of course. Chubby Charles (Riley Griffiths) is the director, sweet Alice (Elle Fanning) is the female lead, and Joe will take part behind the scenes as the makeup man (he says he learned his trade from the Dick Smith instruction book).
On their first night of shooting, the train derails, explodes, and spews forth its odd cargo. The kids are warned, and Woodward is carted off to the town hospital. The military steps in, seals the scene, and quickly discovers the missing piece of spaceship. They trace the theft to the kids, but in the meantime everyone must contend with a much bigger problem: One very angry alien.
Suspense, scares, and moments of bloody violence are tempered with genuine, organic humor, nuanced characters, a touch of puppy love, and moments of fun textured by the hits (ELO's Don't Bring Me Down, and The Knack's My Sharona), fashions (Dolphin shorts, rainbow shirts), and fads (Sony Walkman, the Camaro car) of the day.
There is, of course, a Big Showdown at the end — revealing too much of the creature, in my opinion — which is appropriately satisfying, but Super 8 really is more about the nostalgic journey than the futuristic destination.
= = =
Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson