Awesomely ridiculous.

Rating: 3/10 (2 July 2011)

If you're as gullible as I was...you will go see this movie anyhow, because you're sure that Spielberg wouldn't allow his name on a crappy movie. But if you're on-the-fence, read on. In a nutshell. And I promise this to be true. This movie is a documenting truth that the "trailer", the previews, and the opening weekend box office totals are all that really matters to these "awesome" producers. I guarantee that Spielberg, Abrams, and all others involved watched a screening of this film and said "holy crap - now what are we supposed to do?" "Well we can't shelf it now...so let's just sell it as a complex feel-good hi-tech masterpiece containing distracting sub-stories and hope nobody notices that we suck". IMHO, here's what they did: They bill it with a fairly genius idea. A bunch of adorable kids in 1979, with a knack for mischief (SEE "Stand by me") accidentally film a mysterious event looped into a highly detailed yet improbable train crash (SEE "The Fugitive") where an entire train with many cars derails, flips, turns, explodes...all because it hits a pickup truck at a rail crossing. The world's strongest pickup truck, btw. It and it's driver are amazingly intact...and the driver is able to have a conversation with the kids after the disaster. The accidental Super 8 footage is all but never seen or involved in the film, because it's obvious by the end of the film that the director removed the "alien monster" as much as possible from the movie because it is laughably silly (SEE: the same monster used in Spielberg's "Falling Skies" effort) and is instead replaced with suspenseful sounds and Hitchcock-esque scenes of victims simply gazing upward and screaming. A few scenes are allowed where the creature is seen jumping across the screen, or shown at a distance. During the closing scenes, the creature is revealed - it stores humans in a cocoon type situation (in a secret lair) and snacks on them like Doritos. But it's okay, because 2 minutes later, the 14 year old star talks to it and tells it "everything's okay" (this is where the audience in the AMC theater laughed aloud) and suddenly the creature turns into E.T., blinks it's loving eyes and decides to leave everyone alone, hop into a spaceship and leave. There's a lot of loose ends left loose (characters suddenly disinterested in the whole situation after the creature departs, missing dogs, a little plastic box that jumps up & down, the Super 8 film) but by the end of the movie, you could care less. But I must say, there are some cool spot-on 1979 props and references that made me giggle. My advice - spend your $40 on another theater movie. Wait for "Super 8" to come out on cable TV - then come back here and say "thanks Shark3136!".