J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg Collaborated For This?

Rating: 4/10 (12 June 2011)

I wanted to give this film an 8. As the film went on, I was giving it a 7, then a five, and finally I settled with a 4. It's sad because this is one of those movies that I anticipated for a year now and I can't believe this was the result.
If this is what to expect in the celluloid graveyard of summer movies, then we're in trouble. The concept had potential, and it's enough for me to give them my ten dollars. The first act also sets up potential, but unfortunately the actual story tears this film down. The actual story was also a kept secret by the filmmakers. It's not because it's going to shock you, it's because they were embarrassed of the end result.
It's about a bunch of kids with a Super 8 camera trying to make a movie for a film festival (which is forgotten about in the third act), when suddenly a train derails and explosions happen all around them. The explosion is caused by their science teacher named Old Man Woodward. But then the military gets involved, and the kids take off with this rubix cube.
Yeah, there's a bunch of rubix cubes that the military confiscates and the main kid has it in his room. It, like the Super 8 camera itself, never feels like the focus of the film as it is busy establishing that the town is in fear and the kid's deputy dad is trying to fix things, and the relationship with the main kid and this girl Alice. Apparently, their dads don't want them to see each other and it becomes a child love story.
As the film drones on, it becomes worse and worse. Be prepared to hear the kids constantly yelling, "What's going on?" and "What's happening?" over and over. In the third act, the film derails like the train in the beginning as if the writer's experience writer's block but they just kept writing stuff just to get the script done. Everything starts to feel scripted and formulaic. There's also a moment between kid and alien that felt so out of place, and utterly ridiculous that it gets even worse right to the closing credits.
As of this writing, I regretfully hail Super 8 as the worst movie of the summer. It saddens me because I was so eager to see this, and so sure that it was going to be great, that I hate to end the summer movie season by listing this as the worst. It's still early, and a crop full of movies to go. Super 8, unfortunately, is far from being super.