Short review: Super 8 is good! Go see it before some dickhead internet reviewer spoils the whole story for you.
That won’t be me, by the way. I may be a dickhead internet reviewer, but I have no interest in ruining the experience of seeing Super 8 for anyone. I profoundly admire the fact that writer-director J.J. Abrams, producer Steven Spielberg, their Bad Robot and Amblin Entertainment shingles respectively, and distributor Paramount Pictures all somehow managed to keep the plot of Super 8 as close to the vest as possible. Too many times do I walk into summer movies feeling like I’ve already seen them, thanks to spoiler-happy reviews and over-sharing trailers released over a year in advance. To come into a movie fresh was a welcome novelty, and I was repaid with a well-made, well-told film, which, by the way, is also not exactly a common occurrence.
All you need to know about Super 8 is that it’s a story about a small-town Ohio boy named Joe (Joel Courtney) and his cop dad (Kyle Chandler). In the wake of losing Joe’s mom in an industrial accident, Joe’s dad wants to send him to summer camp but Joe would rather stay home and make Super-8 movies with his friends (the movie is set in 1979, and Super-8 was a popular format for amateur filmmakers at the time). One night the kids sneak out to get some night shooting done, and they witness a catastrophic train accident which is only the beginning of the astounding events that are about to befall their town.
That’s more than I knew going into it, and that’s still plenty less than any other review will give you. In the interest of honoring the filmmakers’ discretion, I’m going to talk around the movie with what I write here, so don’t worry about me ruining anything.
What I want to say is mostly complimentary anyway. J.J. Abrams is an excellent filmmaker, a guy who achieved much success in TV but knows how to make movies that look like movies, and a master-caster who clearly has a rare ability to direct child actors. Honestly, as much as I’m a fan of kids in real life, I tend to avoid movies about them. Child actors as a rule are often some of the most overly-mannered, least-naturalistic human beings on the planet, and directors who don’t know how to handle them properly have been responsible for some of the most shrill, obnoxious films ever made (it pains me to say so, but [don’t] see the majority of Robert Rodriguez’s kids movies for this statement in action.) J.J. doesn’t have that limitation. Spielberg never has either. That’s one way that J.J. clearly justifies the Spielberg comparisons. Some of the kids in Super 8 – most notably the little blond one who’s the reincarnation of Tanner from The Bad News Bears – are pretty obnoxious, but they’re supposed to be that way. Many pre-adolescent boys are. Some are also quiet and contemplative, such as Joel Courtney in the lead role of Joe, one of the better kid-actor performances in recent years. Just as good is Elle Fanning, far surpassing the role of the token girl in the group and portraying one of the most rounded characters in the movie.
A word about the Spielberg comparisons, which are interesting: It’s inevitable that J.J. would get these comparisons, as Spielberg is a mentor, but while no one would resist such flattery, it’s not fully accurate. For one thing, Spielberg didn’t make quite as many movies like Super 8 as most film writers seem to be assuming. Spielberg did always have an affinity for children’s adventure films, but he didn’t technically make that many of them besides E.T., unless you want to count Jurassic Park, his segment in the Twilight Zone anthology film, and everything Short Round does in Temple Of Doom. People are thinking as much of the movies Spielberg produced in the 1980s, if not more, than the ones he actually made himself. It was directors such as Joe Dante, Richard Donner, and Robert Zemeckis who made The Goonies and Gremlins and so on. J.J. is definitely referencing many of the above films with Super 8, but those aren’t the ones I necessarily think of, personally, when I think of Spielberg. Let’s just say that, of the late-70s/early-80s films that J.J. is homaging with Super 8, those don’t include Jaws or Raiders Of The Lost Ark (my personal favorite Spielbergs). Of all the above, Super 8 actually has the most in common with Goonies, although Super 8 is a far better movie, when all is done and said. And if you love Goonies or if you don’t, that assessment should say a lot.
Anyway, these clarifications are a minor question, since there’s no question that Super 8 has the Spielberg influence. Michael Giacchino, the terrific composer who works on all of J.J.’s productions (and many of Pixar’s), turns in a score here that very directly recalls the orchestral work of John Williams. I didn’t need it, because I like what Giacchino does on his own, but also can’t deny that it’s effective. The score, along with the set decorations that include Creature From The Black Lagoon model kits, Creepy Magazine comic covers, and references to George Romero galore, along with the general tone that J.J.’s direction sets, all contribute to the nostalgic kick of the film. And I’m generally not one for nostalgia, but that may be because it’s usually done so clumsily. There’s nothing clumsy about Super 8. It’s an artfully-composed entertainment machine. The suspense is where it needs to be, and so is the humanity.
Do I have reservations? A couple. The blue lens flares are an inexplicable motif. I’m talking about those flashes of light that happen when a light source gets too close to a camera lens. They used to appear in movies more accidentally, but now if you see them, they’re super-deliberate. Michael Bay has been known to indulge. But J.J. does it ALL THE TIME. Lens flares were in J.J.’s 2009 Star Trek, and they’re all over Super 8, even in the night scenes. It’s very distracting, and in my opinion it’s kind of needless. Filmmaking is one of those vocations where the people in the bleacher seats shouldn’t be able to catch you working – in other words, guys like me may be nerds for how a movie looks, but if matinee audiences are noticing lens flares, they’re not fully focused on the movie the way they’re meant to be. J.J.’s direction is too assured, and cinematographer Larry Fong’s work elsewhere is too good-looking, for Super 8 to need any kind of camera flourishes. Just tell the story. The story is good.
And I really mean it: This is a fun, satisfying movie. I wanted to like it beforehand, but for the reasons stated above, I had a little bit of trepidation that I would. I needn’t have worried. I happily recommend Super 8, and I recommend that you see it this weekend, before anyone has the chance to describe every single moment of it to you. Because they’re out there, and they’re closing in on you…
