Spielbergian bliss as interpreted by J.J. Abrams

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2011)

Few films evoke a time and a place well. Fewer still hone that evocation with a style of film-making that gives shape and context to that time and place.
"Super 8" is such a film. Set in the late '70s in a small Ohio steel town, it focuses almost entirely on a small group of kids who are intent on making a zombie movie in and around the town.
The emotional core is formed from the very first scene by the accidental death of the protagonist's mother at the steel mill. Joe, played by a superb Joel Courtney, was a mama's boy and his father, a town deputy - another superb casting with the great Kyle Chandler - is out of his depth in the parenting department.
Summer vacation starts and Joe follows around and helps his best friend Charles, a budding director, make a zombie movie. They shoot around town then find themselves late at night shooting at a deserted train station. While shooting something unfolds behind them - a massive, unexplained train derailment. In the midst of the derailment, the Super 8 camera falls over and records the crash. It records something unknown escaping from a rail car . . .
. . . thus begins the movie's mystery that unfolds steadily throughout. To say much more is to give away the plot, which never wavers to hold your attention. It's pretty much edge of your seat suspense beginning to end.
The wonderful Elle Fanning as Alice has Joe deeply infatuated. Alice has her own family issues including a drunken father who wants her to stay away from Joe, which of course she doesn't. Her mother, having escaped her father, is not around.
All of the young cast is great and Riley Griffiths as Joe's best buddy Charles really stands out.
"Super 8" works so potently as a film of place and time and style for the following reasons: One, the dialogue is genuine - this is how kids talk, especially of that era (though the use of "douche" an an insult felt like an anachronism more suited to today); two, the group of friends are real and interact in a manner that's not contrived or forced; three, the friends are unique, if somewhat cookie-cutter in their differences - for example, one is the pyromaniac (yep I had one of those friends and I got into trouble a number of times with him!), one is the scaredy cat barfer, one the "fat kid" who overcompensates by being bossy, one the total nerd (yep, had one of those friends too), and one the sensitive artist type (that was probably me); and, lastly, it works because it feels exactly like a movie set in that era should feel.
It's unsurprising Stephen Spielberg was involved in the making of "Super 8" because it feels almost exactly like one of his movies from the '70-early '80s- the closest probably being "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" but you can probably throw "Jaws" and "E.T." in there as well. J.J. Abrams is effectively making a Spielberg movie with a little help from his idol but putting his sure hand on the wheel to give it his unique vision.
It's impossible for a child of the '70s such as myself to not love "Super 8." To avoid total hagiography on measure it has its formulaic moments but through my lens it appears almost pitch-perfect in characterization, casting, look, feel, and dialogue. The acting is incredibly good and the young actors who are at the core of the movie have to take most of the credit for that, especially Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning. Hearing them talk and watching their interplay it was nothing less than time travel back to my youth. On their faces I saw a lot of the same faces of the kids I grew up with.
People who were born in the '80s, '90s and beyond may not have quite the same appreciation for the era, but "Super 8" certainly works brilliantly as a gripping, suspenseful action/quasi-sci-fi movie and it has a level of innocence and charm and a tinge of nostalgia that is usually missing from the pure action popcorn movies of today.
"Super 8" is not to be missed.