tries to recapture an era but just feels derivative

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2011)

J.J. Abrams' "Super 8" hearkens back to the days of early Steven Spielberg (who co-produced the film) - a time when summer blockbusters could appeal as much to the heart as to the eye, when a group of intrepid suburban kids could unravel mysteries and take on evil forces, when the military-industrial complex was clearly up to no good, and when tear-stained characters could look in wide-eyed, tight-shot amazement at wonders unraveling above them in the heavens.
Set, appropriately, in 1979 - in a time before digital cameras and CGI technology, when children had to express their creativity and imagination with what was then the technological equivalent of chewing gum and baling wire - "Super 8" centers on a group of nerdish preteens who are attempting to make their own amateur zombie-splatter film for an upcoming contest. While filming one night, the kids are witness to a horrifying freight train crash, the repercussions of which go far beyond just the mass of mangled, twisted metal strewn across the area. For it seems the Air Force has taken a more than casual interest in the event, and soon strange and inexplicable occurrences begin happening in town.
The focal point of the story is Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a young boy whose mother has just been killed in a tragic factory accident, and whose grieving father (Kyle Chandler from TV's incomparable "Friday Night Lights") serves as the town's deputy. Joe also has a crush on the pretty and alluring Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning), who has been brought into the boys' film project at the last moment.
The similarities between "Super 8" and any number of Spielberg - or at least Spielbergian - films (most notably, of course, "E.T.") are both so numerous and so obvious that they really don't bear repeating here. Yet, while I admire much of what Abrams is trying to do in this movie, so much of it falls flat that I really can't recommend it in the final analysis. What's actually missing is that special Spielberg touch, that almost Quixotic visionary conviction that could turn even a simple work like "E.T." into a timeless classic. One never questions Spielberg's belief in his material, but I'm not sure one can quite make the same claim about Abrams, at least not in this particular instance. Abrams' story lacks the streamlined clarity of an "E.T." and, by extension, the emotional resonance that comes along with it. "Super 8" seems to be going off in so many different directions at once that it winds up going nowhere. And, frankly, the sci-fi aspects of the story feel awfully stale at this late stage in the game.
In addition to "E.T.," there are bits and pieces of "The Goonies," "Stand By Me," "Gremlins," and "War of the Worlds" in the film as well. And that, in the final analysis, is what's most wrong with "Super 8." It's made up of so many borrowed parts that, in the end, it's left with nothing it can truly call its own.