A Solid B movie

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2011)

I've wanted to see this movie since the first teaser came out. I really wanted to like this movie. I wanted to be blown away by it. But I'd have to say, I didn't feel it lived up to my expectations.
People use the word "nostalgia" a lot when talking about this movie. I suppose that means a couple of things: 1) The movie is set in the late 1970s, in small town America, when friendships were made through real face-to-face interactions. 2) It's a thriller told through the eyes of kids, which has been done most successfully by Spielberg, who had a hand in the story. (M. Night Shyamalan would be the next guy in mind, but it's not great to be compared to him right now.) If that is all you need for a movie to work, you're all set. Super 8 has all of that. It has a fantastic cast of child actors and a story that works. It wasn't trying to blow you away with explosions (although there's plenty of that). In fact, it's the polar opposite of a Michael Bay action film. It's an action film that focuses on story, not action.
I feel that the excitement Abrams had in making this movie reflected the excitement the kids in the movie had in making their own movie. I think many kids (including myself when I was that age) who managed to get their hands on a camera liked making movies and telling stories. But if you're familiar with Abrams style of storytelling, you know that he likes to start of with a big mysterious happening and tease the audience along. That works only for so long because eventually, you need to reveal what is really happening. The movie as a whole becomes a tease that grows gradually over the movie. You see a flash, a shadow, a glimpse, you see things that suggest size and power and you picture something awesome.
In many ways, Super 8 follows the dangerous path that M. Night Shyamalan followed in movies like "The Village" and "Signs." In this case, I'm not talking about a twist ending. I'm talking about the build-up to the mystery core of the movie. If you're going to spend most of your marketing and most of the movie teasing your audience about a mystery "thing," you'd better make sure that "thing" works. One thing about Spielberg's movies like Jaws and Jurassic Park is that there's no mystery about what you'll see. You know what a shark looks like and you know what dinosaurs look like. With a movie like Super 8, a lot of the expectation rests on what exactly this "thing" is and whether that "thing" turns out to meet or exceed your expectations. For me, it didn't meet my expectations. It was just okay. I felt like I've seen it before. You probably have as well.