Who saw THAT coming?

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2011)

A likable film with just the right amount of postmodernism... enough so it's a wink to the audience but never so it gets ostentatious or fails to charm. Sure, Super 8 is a movie with its influences on its sleeve, but it's genuinely likable stuff with some nicely drawn characters.
While it loses its way a little with the alien section in the middle, what kills it stone dead is the Hollywood ending. Stirring strings, "emotional" payoffs, letting go of a dead mother's memory in the sake of love, "I love you Dad", learning to understand one another... the film collapses under the weight of mawkish, overstated sentiment, something which had never troubled the other parts of the film. In this respect then it can, at least, claim to be a genuine tribute to Spielberg, a talented director with candyfloss in the place of sincere emotion.