Super 8 is Great!

Rating: 10/10 (10 June 2011)

I'm of the belief that most people haven't yet digested just how much things have changed over the last five years. We're living in a different world than we were in 2006, one that certainly seems alien to the movie settings of classic-era Steven Spielberg films. A modern world that, aside from the look of the creature/catalyst in the film itself, is alien to the world we see in J.J. Abrams' 1970s-set film, Super 8.
Set your clock back to 1979, a simpler time, back when people moved slower, talked nicer and  well  cared more. Now consider these things: The Goonies; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Signs; Cloverfield; the geeks from "Freaks the Geeks"; and maybe, just maybe, a splash of Mars Attacks! and Spielberg's War of the Worlds and ET. Throw all that junk in a blender, stick it in a small town (still, remember, in 1979) and you have an idea of the style and appeal of this Abrams' new movie.
The story, as it should be, is a simple one. Basically, something really bad happens to a small town full of good people. Something impossible to understand, even for the Air Force dudes who have been working on a solution for decades. Something impossible that only the silent minds of children can translate and solve. We meet our crew of inevitable heroes - five sassy boys and one enigmatic and broken girl - as they savor their summer break working on a zombie movie they plan to enter into a film festival. They go here, they go there, they screw around, not unlike the crew of goons from Goonies or even Stand by Me. The lead boy, Joe (played by future star Joel Courtney), is the soulful son of a fearless and recently widowed deputy (played brilliantly by "Friday Night Lights" star Kyle Chandler); his best friend (the hilarious Riley Griffiths) is a brilliant old soul with big dreams and high emotions; and Joe's crush (the suddenly amazing Elle Fanning) is the stunning daughter of Joe's father's mortal enemy, a town drunk named Louis Dainard (Ron Elard). Solid set-up, right? Formulaic you say? You bet.
And sure, Super 8 is, from afar, quite formulaic. A period piece monster/alien flick set in a small town and led by a cast of incredibly lovable "tweens" - almost sounds like something a scriptwriting class would put down on paper, right? Who cares. Abrams handles each frame, each scene, each gigantic explosion and slight facial expression, with so much love, so much skill and so much studied consideration that you can't help but get sucked into his Spielberg- produced version of movie magic. As the story progresses we know that everything will eventually - after plenty of running scared, wild flames, sweet tears and epic destruction - be alright. There will be a hug and maybe a kiss. There will be heroes and connections. There will be sub plots that make us care and bad guys who only the crowd can understand in full. Super 8 is, without any doubt, a big, brawny blockbuster film that intends to touch all the bases - your head, your heart, your funny bone and, most importantly to folks like myself, the part of your soul that values strongly crafted screen art.
Without giving away too much, I'll just say this: Super 8 is the first movie I ever outwardly cheered for during the end credits. Not because it's necessarily a huge artistic achievement like, say, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life; but because it managed to take me to another world. A world where Michael Bay isn't allowed, Spielberg is your lovable guiding light, we don't solve our problems with computers and  ya know  anything is possible. Movie magic. And sure, same as was the case with M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, there are plot holes of reason here and there that some NASA goofs will someday dissect. But how much has that really ever mattered at the movies? And do we, the people of 2011, have any business saying what could or should be in an alternate reality such as the one in the 70s small town of Super 8? We, the lovers of fiction, do not.
My recommendation: leave the boringly logical part of your brain at home, forget about reality television, get to the theater and escape to Steven Spielberg and J.J Abram's 1979. Super 8 is a tasty, incredibly well-made Hollywood film that demands another lap before it has even crossed home. Somehow the so- far best commercially released film of 2011is a blockbuster about aliens, "tweens" and explosions. Who'd have thunk it?
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