Sci-fi flick shows an entertaining homage to Spielberg

Rating: 8/10 (24 June 2011)

With every movie buff, there is one movie director and his or her films that each movie geek grew up with over the decades. Whether it's Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Penny Marshall, George Lucas, Frank Capra, or Clint Eastwood. This year's nostalgic film is Super 8 directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek & Mission Impossible II) and produced by Steven Spielberg (Shindler's List & Jaws). Super 8's characters, story, and atmosphere give a justified and memorable two and a half hours of rekindling of the films by Steven Spielberg that made us go "ooh" and "aw" for four decades and decades to come.
The movie centers around 13 year old Joe Lamb played by newcomer Joel Courtney. The opening scene is of the funeral reception of the death of Joe's mother after a tragic accident at the machine factory where she worked. Six months later, Joe's relationship with father, Sheriff Lamb played by Kyle Chandler (The Kingdom) hasn't improved since his mom died. In order to get away from it all and mourn, he hangs out with his friends while they try to finish Charlie's, his best friend, amateur zombie flick with his Super 8 camera. During a night shoot at the town's local train station, the gang find themselves, while filming, right in the middle of a horrific train wreck caused by their school teacher who purposely derails it with his pick- up truck. During all of the on-going destruction, Joe and the Super 8 camera witness some mysterious unseen being or creature escape from one of the storage cars. After, all of the mayhem stops; military troops immediately arrive at the scene of the accident and begins to investigate. Joe and the others quickly flee and promise each other not to speak a word of this to anybody.
A few days later, more military forces begin to arrive at the town and starts to surround the entire crash site and sanction it off from the town citizens. To make things even creepier; dogs, appliances, car engines and eventually people begin disappearing and calls come in from people who say they saw something big that they can't fully explain. Joe dotes it upon himself and the crew that they should snoop around find out what really escaped from the train wreck. Of course with every group of kids who get too nosey, they reveal something that none of them are prepared for.
Director J.J. Abrams does a subtle, but recognizable job at blending in all of the memorable aspects of Spielberg films like the funny relationships between the kids, as they are this century's Goonies, even though there is only one Goonies. Increasing the curious tension of the appearance of the creature like the ingenious method in Jaws. The combination of visuals and musical score to create an E.T.-esque feel to the popcorn eating wonderment that is the film itself.
There is a lot of pressure on new coming actors especially child actors in impressing critics and audiences across the world because it's that first impression that decides whether or not that actor or actress is worth looking into. The newcomer up to bat is Joel Courtney who plays Joe, definitely brought the emotion, combined with Abrams' direction, of a small boy losing his mother and never being able to let go of her and move on. I'm sure Courtney was relaxed, while being surrounded by experienced child actors like Elle Fanning (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Gabriel Basso (The Big C). Courtney and rest of the kids do a fine job in adding little traits here and there that make the gang and each of them even more entertaining.
The flaws are, first of all, forgivable. There are a few questionable historical references of products like The Walkman and The Rubik's Cube, which is debatable whether these two pop culture icons actually were released to America in 1979. The Rubik's Cube for sure wasn't released to the states until 1980. The Walkman's release, on the other hand, is questionable. Another quick complaint was the noticeable, blue camera glare that kept popping up very often from time to time. Now, Abrams did this in Star Trek and I believe that he does this to add some realism to the fact that there would be glares from the camera metallic objects or something. All in all, certain audience members and I found it very distracting and it acted like a tick that wouldn't go away.
Super 8 is a great film that contributes to the hopefully satisfying ending of June. If you're a huge Spielberg buff and you appreciate his work then this is a film that will have you remember all of the classic moments of his films that astounded viewers for decades and decades to come. Super 8 will receive three and a half out of four popcorn bags.