Hollow and superficial manipulation with a very few redeeming qualities

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2011)

It took me some time to identify one quality that made "Super 8" so disappointing and irritating for me. I think it all comes to deceptiveness of this film. There are well-made movies and poorly made movies, but deceptiveness is a unique characteristic that runs across these lines.
A deceptive movie is a hollow, empty movie that pretends to have a depth and a substance that in fact it does not possess. A deceptive movie (just like a deceptive person) gives empty promises, false hopes and expectations to the unsuspecting viewers. By the end of a deceptive movie, its poor victims find the promises unfulfilled, the expectations crushed, and the hopes lost in vain.
"Super 8" promised a big, exciting, and enjoyable Mystery. Not only the promised mystery turns out to be somewhat predictable and not very impressive, but it also comes forth as underdeveloped and superficial.
The movie fails to find the right balance between the two very different stories: a sci-fi mystery story and a story of the middle school students shooting a Super 8 film for a festival in Cleveland. Ideally, these two stories are supposed to nicely complement each other and to be smoothly and intricately intertwined. In the sad reality of "Super 8", they do not blend and keep fighting with each other for the screen time throughout the movie.
The constant switches between the two main stories quickly become disrupting for the movie flow. First, the movie would immerse us in a tricky and nostalgic world of the teenage relationships and even hint for some depth and character development, and then it would almost abruptly switch gears and go into a hard-core sci-fi action/mystery mode. It would almost succeed in making us excited about the sci-fi part only to quickly switch back to the twists and turns of the teenage relationships saga.
As a result, both plot lines lack depth and remain superficial and underdeveloped.
"Super 8" makes a significant effort to re-create a look and feel of a small American town in the late 1970s. It makes us believe that the time setting of the movie has a purpose, significance, and that it will play a role in the movie by somehow anchoring the events. This impression, however, turns out to be false. The plot can be easily moved ten, twenty, thirty years forward in time with some minor modifications. The only ones who would suffer from that would be a small group of nostalgic fans of the "Super 8" motion picture film format.
Moreover, while the movie does a remarkably good job at recreating all the minor details of the time, it fails to breathe life into its perfect, but soulless, artificial creation.
Almost everything in the movie is an over-used cliché: a group of teenagers with the predictable characters and relationships, a sheriff of a small town and his heroic deputy, a quirky town folk, a rogue, but noble scientist that fights a caricature military villain. Last, but not the least is the disappointing, underdeveloped so-called "mystery" that looks like it has been compiled from some past movies featuring similar "mysteries".
Overall, there is a lot of technical professionalism, thoroughness, and attention to detail in "Super 8", but not so much heart or depth.
In some movies, a good acting redeems the lack of depth or the deficiencies of the plot. Unfortunately, that is not the case for "Super 8" with its mostly mediocre acting. The only bright spot in the cast are some of the teenage actors, and especially Elle Fanning! Her sincere, deep, and versatile performance easily wins the audience.
In conclusion, the movie does not do justice for J.J. Abrams who as we very well know is quite capable of creating such gems as "Star Trek" (2009). In "Super 8", however, there seems to be much more of Steven Spielberg, who produced it, than of J.J. Abrams who wrote it and directed it. In my opinion, this is a classic example when a too heavy influence of the producer not only does not benefit the movie, but also makes it quite shallower and quite less original than it potentially could have been.
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