Stand By Me...just not so close

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2011)

I never thought I would ever give J.J. Abrams or Steven Spielberg a mediocre review so the proceeding comes as a surprise. Super 8 is like take-out Chinese food - an hour later you feel a little empty. Here's a synopsis. Alien crashes, is tortured and abused, escapes (where the movie begins) and proceeds to throw a massive bloody tantrum (with very little blood). There is also a love story or at least two good-looking young actors who put on the longing faces that should elicit a response from the audience. My wife and I are in our fifties so we are not the target audience for this movie. The girl next to us, however, was young teens/early twenties and is definitely the core demographic. She spent the entire movie texting. I hesitate to criticize the actors who seemed to be doing a good job, technically. Were J.J. and Steven trying to do a much smaller version of Cloverfield? Were they doing Stand By Me with less laughter? E.T. goes postal? I'm just not sure. If you mixed all of the above in a cuisinart and dumbed it down to a teen audience I suppose Super 8 would be the result. I think if they had concentrated on any of the above the end product would have at least been entertaining. Sigh..wait for the DVD. On the upside I read a ton of positive reviews on this site - whatta I know?