Pretty great but both made and mired by Spielburg influence

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2017)

The current index review by Nooch007 ends: "All in all, Super 8 was a terrific film experience, that will leave you with a smile on your face". Which I would amend to "...a terrific film that will leave a smile on your face but a sour taste in the mouth"
I watched this as a remedy for watching and finishing Stranger Things S01 and while I wait for S02 - great, I thought, an American teen adventure movie, set when I was born ('79) so will fulfil most of the requirements of a void left by Stranger Things with its wondrous and spot-on nostalgia. Plus directed by Abrams, who impressed us all with Star Trek.
The film is really great and ticks most of the boxes. That is until
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S P O I L E R S
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the protagonist talks the monster into not killing anyone else and just to go home. Of course it could have just continued to kill everyone and go home anyway. Which is kind of what I could believe. I understand about having to build tension to thrill the audience etc blah but also to have a happy ending etc blah - and I'm not proposing an alternative to the plot but with the drawn out soundtrack and the sudden magical negotiation ability of the kid to talk his way out of being killed. I was about to write about the blatant implausibility but the plot had already delineated with the doctor who communicated with the alien in the lab by being touched (picked up) by the alien and the same thing happened (presumably) when the protagonist kid was picked up in the underground tunnels. Presumably because both their intention was to communicate they didn't get destroyed, whereby the air force guys got mashed because their intentions were hostile - but there's no explanation about why expendable characters who perhaps just scared and didn't have time to be either hostile or want to communicate still just got wrecked. This is typical of mainstream storytelling and is lazy and always pisses me off about ALL of Spielburg's work. Takes a good idea and just saturates it with crowd-pleasing sentimentality. he ruined most of his films this way, except maybe a couple Indy ones and probably Jaws. It's just spiel. Pun intended. And poor old Abrams seems to be musing for Spielburg by exhibiting exactly the same kind of sickening saccharine sentimentality. Of course that doesn't make it bad, just lazy. The whole film was pretty great, until the ending. A monster is a monster, it doesn't get to terrorise and then at the very end be exonerated. I understand why it might in Wollstonecraft/Shelly's Frankenstein or other texts where character and plot is developed throughout the story but here none of that happened. Just annoys me. That's why Stranger Things was so great, no sentimentality, just story and character. I understand that this is ostensibly a kids film and Stranger Things isn't.
Still, worth a watch. Will be liked by fans of SPIELburg and ET which I'm not (though I've always been staggered by how he could make a whole generation love what is basically a talking poo so props to him there) Also it's good that you don't see much of the monster as it builds suspense as should be (but also because it wasn't a very interesting design - looks like a dog's skeleton which has gone soft mixed with an octopus). I was going to rate 6/10 but 7 as it's fairly unique and will have a nostalgic feeling for viewers who grew up in the late 20th century. Probably would have been 9/10 without the crappy touchy-feely ending.