Super 8: Elle Fanning, America's Sweetheart

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2011)

The delightful movie "Super 8" takes place during the summer of 1979 in the fictional suburban town of Lilian, Ohio, centering around a group of engaging eighth graders fascinated with writing and directing a bare-bones "zombie" movie. Armed with little more than a single Super 8 camera, a single spot light with props and costumes "borrowed" from their parents' closets our intrepid group of young thespians soldier on. Stay seated at the end of the movie because for what provides us with a charming sense of closure, we are treated to a viewing of the actual completed short "zombie" movie as the credits roll.
"Super 8," directed by JJ Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, is seen through the eyes of our young protagonist, Joe (Joel Courtney) and opens with the (unseen) accidental death of his mother. The only significant adult role is that of Joe's emotionally remote widowed father (Kyle Chandler) too caught up in his own grief and dedication to his job as the town's Deputy Sheriff to even think about his new role as a single parent.
Joe is a quiet, rather normal thirteen year old boy, whose hobby is assembling and painting model trains. It is his knowledge of painting his trains makes him the natural choice one to take on the role as the "make-up" artist. The object of Joe's affection is the lovely Alice (Elle Fanning,) a beautiful young girl who begrudgingly accepts Joe's invitation to play the female lead role in the boys' "bare-bones" production, but clearly enjoys the attention of playing the leading lady, as she slowly, yet inevitably, grows to return Joe's adolescent affection. Alice is also the only child of an emotionally distant single dad played by Ron Eldard (who coincidentally lost his mother in a crash when he was a child,) In one of the of the movies most charming moments Joe delicately applies make-up to Alice's enticingly beautiful, yet totally innocent, face. She is also the only significant female role in the entire movie. In addition to Alice, we meet Charlie (Riley Griffiths) who is the director and driving force behind the making of this distinctly amateurish "zombie" movie, that he hopes to enter in a local film competition. Rounding out their gang is the perpetually frightened "leading man" Martin (Gabriel Basso), the endearingly adorable cinematographer/pyromaniac, Cary (Ryan Lee) who carries a backpack full of homemade firecrackers as well as a mouth full of braces, and Preston (Zach Mills) who is basically just hanging out with his buddies.
What makes "Super 8" unmistakably Spielbergian, is that at the heart of an engrossing adventure film about a violent train crash, and the havoc, fear and panic created by the existence of an unseen alien monster hidden on the derailed train, is a very charming, poignant story of friendship, loyalty and young love,
I thoroughly enjoyed this film, but although JJ Abrams is listed as the sole director, when was the last time you saw a movie poster that included the producers name in the same size font as the directors? Interestingly enough, in the opening credits, both JJ Abrams "Bad Robot" logo appears right after Steven Spielberg's "Amblin" production logo. Any fan of televisions hit shows "Felicity," "Alias," "Lost" or "Fringe" can tell you that the "Bad Robot" logo is a childlike sketched red robot head, hiding in black weeds in the light of a huge gray moon. Amblin's logo needs less description, it is a simple black and white sketch of ET and Eliot flying across an enormous white moon. Hmmmmmm.
It's certainly no insult to Mr. Abrams that "Super 8" seems like a finely tuned jigsaw puzzle of Mr. Spielberg's most enduring films including "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," "Jaws," and "Jurassic Park" (whose logo is a sketch of the head of a huge red dinosaur in the shadow of an enormous white moon.) We can only hope that JJ carries on in the master's groundbreaking footsteps.
Parenthetically, I find it interesting that Spielberg is credited as the Executive Producer of this summers' enormously successful, yet entirely soulless, box office smash, "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon." Not only had the greatest director of our lifetime been the Executive Producer of all three "Transformers" movies, which get discernibly worse with every sequel, but he has just added the same title to the completely inconsequential tribute to Sylvester Stallone "Real Steel." Between Spielberg's Executive Producing choices and Tom Hanks' bloated, absurdly unfunny, instantly forgettable "Larry Crowne," I'm truly starting to get worried about these two extraordinary talents. With extraordinary talent, comes extraordinary responsibility to your audience. Come on guys...we've grown to expect far more from both of you.