Rating:  

Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills, Gabriel Basso, Amanda Michalka, Joel McKinnon Miller, Jessica Tuck, Brett Rice, Dale Dickey, Michael Hitchcock, Glynn Turman.
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Director: J.J. Abrams
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 112 Mins.
Release Date: June 10, 2011
Home Video Date: November 22, 2011
Box Office: $127.0 Million
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Amblin Entertainment, Bad Robot, and Paramount Pictures.

Written by: J.J. Abrams.

The teaser arrived last summer. A cargo train is seen racing through a quiet town. It is 1979 and title cards inform us that a section of Area 51 has been closed and everything is being shipped to a top secret Ohio location. Then the train collides with a truck, resulting in a horrific accident with wrecked metal and train cars hurtling through the air and into the night sky. Massive explosions, giant balls of fire, and screeching metal fills the soundtrack. Another title card simply states “It’s Coming”. And then, in one train car someone or some thing starts punching from the inside out, wanting to be free.

That 2010 trailer for “Super 8″ was, in many ways, the perfect teaser. What is coming? Why did everything we see end up being filtered through a Super 8 camera? What did I just see? Cutting to the summer of 2011, we finally find out what writer/director J.J. Abrams has envisioned and “Super 8″ feels like a film he has wanted to make for a very long time.

Set in the fictional town of Lillian, Ohio in 1979, a tightknit group of middle school friends are ready to embark on their summer vacation. For this particular group of friends, summer means they can finally focus on and complete work on their first film – a zombie movie. The film is directed by the determined Charles (Riley Griffiths), with Carey (Ryan Lee) handling special effects and explosions, Martin (Gabriel Basso) is the leading man, Preston (Zach Mills) tries to impart wisdom and intelligence to the operation, and Joe (Joel Courtney) serves as an everything-else-man handling makeup, sound, and any other ancillary tasks required of the production. Of course, most of the kids are in front of the camera as well, with poor Carey serving as the go to zombie for the killing scenes.

The film needs a female romantic lead for Martin and the unattainable Alice (Elle Fanning) becomes the object of these filmmakers’ interests. Joe is a bit taken by Alice and after the crew summons up the courage to approach Alice about starring in their film, she agrees to join the production.

Alice’s big scene occurs down at a depot near a set of train tracks which run through Lillian and everyone sneaks out long past midnight for the shoot. Alice steals her father’s car, picks up everyone and an impassioned romantic dialogue between Alice and Martin is the goal of the night’s work. During the scene, Alice goes to a completely different place emotionally leaving some of the crew in tears. However, production problems require a second take.

Soon, a train appears on the horizon and with Charles yelling “production value!”, the crew scramble to get everything reset in order to shoot their scene with a real, live train rushing by. As the scene is unfolding again, Joe turns and eyes a truck haphazardly trying to position itself on the tracks. Looking again, he sees the truck accelerating rapidly towards the train and then…the collision, described above and seen a year ago in previews, leaves everyone panicked, shaken, and without any possible clue as to what has just transpired.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. “Super 8″ is simply great entertainment. The film zips along at an expert pace and Abrams knows how to lay out his story consistently and effectively. The young actors are so well cast that as a viewer you immediately connect with them and draw parallels to kids you either know or knew or heard about. All of the components are in place for “Super 8″ to be that rare movie that appeals to a cross-section of moviegoers – young, old, mainstream, independent, science fiction enthusiasts, etc. But have we not seen those components before?

We have. And largely, we have seen them from the prolific and heralded work of one of the film’s producers, Steven Spielberg. And therein lies the conundrum with “Super 8″ — are we watching a filmmaker (Abrams) drawing from the influences which led him to becoming a filmmaker or are we watching a skilled filmmaker and storyteller simply sampling and borrowing from earlier and memorable films to try and make his idea seem fresh and new?

I want to believe the former and not the latter. “Super 8″, reliant on young actors, is a whole lot of a lot of movies. Comparisons can be drawn from Spielberg’s “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” and “E.T.” just as easily as they can be drawn to “The Goonies” (a story envisioned by Spielberg) and “Stand By Me”. When you spike in the elements of the monster at the end of the train and now on the loose in Lillian, Ohio, Abrams filters “Super 8″ through the lens of a 1950′s or early 1960′s disaster/monster movie. It is clear that as the son of a television producer who made his own films as a teenager, Abrams is harkening back to the films which influenced him in his late teenage years.

As personal a film as this may be for Abrams, the movie struggles to stand apart from those influences and tell its own story. And that is perhaps what is so frustrating about the whole endeavor. Abrams has found terrific chemistry amongst his young acting ensemble, including the relationship and connections made by Joel Courtney’s Joe and Elle Fanning’s Alice. As good as the young actors are here, Elle Fanning is far and away the best of the group and with her work in 2010”s “Somewhere” and this film, she is laying the foundation for becoming a potential superstar in the years to come.

“Super 8″ plays like two, or even three films, existing in a parallel universe at times. The kids drive one narrative involving the making of the zombie movie, Joe and Alice deal with parental absence and the strain of a changing familial structure, with a more menacing and real monster movie circling around those stories. When Abrams eventually marries these storylines together, the film buckles and wheezes a bit. As the kids are making their films, the adults – specifically, Kyle Chandler’s deputy, Ron Eldard’s down-on-his-luck and depressed father, and Noah Emmerich’s Colonel Nelec are nothing more than caricatures, never fleshed out beyond their costumes and predictable dialogue and behaviors. Surprisingly, when Colonel Nelec literally comes face-to-face with the realities of the situation he is facing with in Lillian, the suspense and excitement which should be amplifying the moment is sorely lacking.

But acknowledging all of this, the film is so fun to watch that most will forgive the inconsistencies of the story, the heavy-handedness of the film’s emotional core, and a groan-inducing final few minutes. To stand up for the film, I take comfort in admiring Abrams ambition with the project, the way in which in certain moments he can hold you in the palm of his hand and draw a viewer’s knees up to their chest in breathless anticipation. He achieves that at times here, when the monster is heard but not seen, and then scene-by-scene revealed a little bit more and more again. Amidst all of the chaos, when one character goes missing, the unnerving excitement involving the search and possible rescue are on par with some of Abrams’ best work.

“Super 8″ will serve for many as the embodiment of the perfect summer movie experience. Although I have some resistance to a full-on embrace of the film, I completely see how and why this film has the potential to fill a sorely needed void at the multiplex. “Super 8″ will be a film that potentially can connect moviegoers of all ages…like Spielberg did so expertly with the films J.J. Abrams borrows or pays homage to here. Then again, for so many people seeing “Super 8″, they may have never seen “E.T.” or even heard of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or “The Goonies”, so it may be that my resistance is generational on some level.

Regardless, “Super 8″ will make you smile, laugh, and move you to the edge of your seat as easily as it will make you cower behind your popcorn bucket or turn into your jacket. And even if the underbaked subplot storylines are obvious and limiting, and the ending (why J.J….why that ending?!?!) is so frustratingly hokey, it is simply hard to not be welcoming of the enthusiastic and endearing effort that J.J. Abrams and his tremendous cast of young actors have put forth here.

ADVISORY: Stay for the credits to see a nice and hilarious treat that pays off on one of the film’s subplots perfectly.

SHOULD I SEE IT?

“Super 8″ has the potential to be one of the biggest movies of the summer and should play well to any passive or active movie fan. The film retains a unique charm in its balance between youthful energy and humor, suspense and mystery, and science-fiction intensity.

For a great number of fans of Spielberg films from long ago, and other iconic films from the mid-80′s, this will feel like a nice homage or nod and a wink to those efforts; namely, “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.

The film has a terrific pace and draws you in from the opening frame and is never ever boring. Abrams certainly knows how to manipulate emotions tremendously.

We have a star on the rise in Elle Fanning.

NO

If you fully engage in the story and invest in the universe Abrams and “Super 8″ creates, you may be let down tremendously by the potential of what might have been and what ultimately is given to you on screen. Despite all the rapturous acclaim audiences may feast upon this, there is a problematic story many will choose to overlook.

For a great number of fans of Spielberg films from long ago, and other iconic films from the mid-80′s, this will feel like too much of a homage or nod and wink to those efforts, rendering the film to look unoriginal and nothing more than a reincorporation of Abrams’ favorite movies in this setting.

The ending may lose a lot of you.

You are not a fan of science-fiction, monsters, period pieces, young actors, melodrama, suspense, thrills, dry humor…wait, why do you go to movies again?