Back when I was growing up there was a young filmmaker known for great movies like Jaws
, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
. These were wonderful movies. The first was scary, the second was thought-provoking and the third was excellent family entertainment. As the 1980′s came along, this filmmaker, Steven Spielberg, made other fine works, like the Indiana Jones series
and in the 1990′s gave us Jurassic Park
. Then he discovered World War II, and that was basically then end of him making “genre” films that appealed to a wide audience.
But apparently I wasn’t the only one who had fond memories of Spielberg’s earlier career. JJ Abrams, noted as the man who made Lost
and directed the Star Trek reboot
, seems to also have those sorts of good memories. So he teamed up with Spielberg and made Super 8, a film which, aside from the modern special effects, would not seem out of place in Spielberg’s resume.
Super 8 centers around events in small-town Ohio in 1979. Joe Lamb is a young boy whose mother has died at the start of the film. Four months later he and his friends are making a zombie movie when they inadvertently bear witness to a massive (and extremelyunrealistic), train derailment. They escape with their lives, unaware that something else has escaped, too. Soon all the town’s dogs disappear, only to turn up in nearby towns. The Air Force arrives to clean up the train mess and begins basically overtaking the town (and get away with massive lies, because if there’s one thing we know about the 1970′s, it’s that investigative journalism didn’t really exist
and trust in the government was absolute
). Then various items and people start to disappear and the action gets ramped-up to eleven, leading to an unnecessarily action-heavy third act.
At its core this is a movie about the relationship between a young boy, his friends and a girl that he’s starting to develop a crush on. The movie is at its finest when it shows these kids just being kids. When it shows them hanging out chatting in a diner and teasing each other like kids do. When it shows them sneaking out of their homes to film at night. When it shows them being appalled/overjoyed that they’re actually breaking into their school during summer vacation. These moments, as well as the ones highlighting Joe’s somewhat complicated relationship with his father, also the town deputy and person in charge after the sherrif disappears), are the true heart of the film.
Those moments also make the moments of action, which include the military going nuts in the middle of the town, completely unnecessary. Those scenes add nothing to the plot, really, aside from creating some artificial peril for our heroes to deal with. Really one could edit out all the military elements and be left with a good, solid, summer science fiction film for the whole family. Also, having gone nuts with the action sequence, I feel that Abrams missed a really opportunity to kill off one of the kids. Harsh? Maybe, but it might have added something to the film. But consider the one of the pivotal moments of Jaws is when a six-year-old boy is gruesomely eaten by the shark.
I also need to make mention of Abrams as a director. He’s good at what he does. He’s very good at what he does. But he’s never met a lens flare he didn’t like, and frankly it’s really, really distracting. If you thought scenes in Star Trek overused the lens flare, just you wait. Abrams really goes nuts with it in this movie and it does not add anything to the film.
Ultimately this is a very good movie, and I’d said it’s suitable for pretty much the entire family.
