J.J. Abrams gives Spielberg a cinematic man-hug.

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2011)

Director J.J. Abrams, an obvious sci-fi nut, was born in 1966, meaning that, like myself, he would have grown up following the career of Steven Spielberg; Super 8 is his cinematic love-letter to all things Spielbergian, a big-budget tribute to the bearded-one's particular brand of suburban sci-fi.
Set in a small-town America in the late 1970s, the film follows a close-knit group of high school film-makers who stumble upon a military secret whilst shooting a scene for their 8mm zombie flick. With its small group of dysfunctional friends, sinister government officials, spectacular effects-laden set-pieces, and a suitably schmaltzy message, Super 8 gets the ingredients more or less spot-on, but still fails to be a wholly satisfying affair, Abrams playing his trump card way too early with an improbably fiery but utterly exhilarating train crash that he never manages to top, followed by a rather uneventful middle third, and a disappointing finale that only succeeds in matching Spielberg in terms of mawkish sentimentality.
An amusing end credits sequence that features the 8mm movie made by Super 8's budding Romeros proves to be one of the highlights of the whole film.