Check your brain at the door and enjoy

Rating: Null/10 (23 July 2011)

Super 8 is good film, technically well put together, well cast and acted, and pretty to watch. The story keeps moving and drags you along with it. Still, it is unoriginal, stereo-typical, and cobbled together as if from a Hollywood script Job Lots. J. J. Abrams deserves no credit or acclaim for this film since not one aspect of it is actually his ~ he wandered through the grocery store of thematic elements and picked from this shelf and that till the story came together. The card-board cut-out military characters and nature are painful and distracting unless you lean to the left and drink the kool-aid. It is clear that Abrams has little actual knowledge about the military and possibly less about government.
I am a harsh critic. All I ask is a modicum of believability. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the Air Force uses planes not tanks ~ I could be wrong though. Given the nature of American culture in 1979, how does Abrams explain the fact that there were no whistle-blowers, no political over-sight, and no pesky reporters poking into this project? He doesn't ~ the audience is just supposed to buy into the Evil Government Big Brother mind-set. What insults most of all though is the American soldiers ignoring Posse Commitatus and murdering civilians.