Nostalgia at it's best!

Rating: 10/10 (13 June 2011)

'SUPER 8': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)
Nostalgia at it's best! 'SUPER 8' is a great throwback to the 80's sci-fi kids films that inspired it. Just like producer Steven Spielberg's classic flicks from that decade. Writer/director J.J. Abrams has been quoted by many to be the next Spielberg and with this film I think he definitely lives up to that representation (also following the very impressive 'STAR TREK' reboot from 2 years ago). The movie is a classic coming of age film mixed with adventure and sci-fi, much like many of the great films of the 80's like 'E.T.', 'THE GOONIES', 'EXPLORERS', etc.. The film stars a group of mostly unknown child actors like Joel Courtney and Riley Griffiths (both in their film debut roles) as well as Elle Fanning, Zach Mills, Ryan Lee and Gabriel Basso. It's complete fun popcorn entertainment with equally impressive parts of alien action flick adventure and emotional coming of age drama.
The movie is set in 1979 when 13 year old Joe Lamb (Courtney) just lost his mother to a work accident. It flashes forward four months to when Joe is helping his three friends make a zombie movie on Super 8 film. The director of the flick Charles (Griffiths) asks one of the most beautiful and popular girls at his school, Alice (Fanning), to star in his film because he has a crush on her (I know this move pretty well). Once filming Joe and Alice hit it off instead though, much to Charles' disappointment. While filming at a local train station the five kids witness a train wreck and capture glimpses of it on film. When people begin disappearing and strange occurrences keep occurring the kids find themselves involved in something well over their heads.
The movie is whimsical and very adventurous as well as touching and full of strong character driven drama. It works best as a coming of age film, despite the cool effects and thrilling action scenes. The mystery and surprises touted in the advertisements are nothing more than a marketing gimmick. The film is pretty straight forward traditional film telling and pretty much everything you'd expect from the trailers going into it. The previews did a good job of not giving away too much of the film or revealing the monster to you but there's really no mystery here. Just a good old fashioned kids monster movie. The effects are impressive and the action scenes are well shot and edited, never showing you more than you need to see until the big payoff at the end. The drama builds at the same rate as the action though and the two climaxes occur at the same time (which is the way all great films like this should play out). Spielberg of course set the mold for films like this, Shyamalan and others have followed to great results. This is another masterpiece in the same league. It will probably disappoint those looking for something more (in the way of action and special effects) but for movie nerds like myself it fulfills everything about cinema we grew up loving.
Watch our review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4tG6zhJxO8