Mostly fun, mostly absurd, partly great theatrics, suburban dystopia redefined

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2011)

Super 8 (2011)
Oh dear, I guess Stephen Spielberg knows what might make money, and he produced this movie without taking a huge risk. And writer/director J.J. Abrams buys into the extravaganza of the Spielberg kind of sci-fi story, with suburban America on the fringe of something big and otherworldly. It could have worked even with the endlessly overworked clichés, with better writing and better direction. Yes, that would be you, Mr. Abrams.
It helps to know going in that this is a teen movie, and teen viewers will get a lot more out of it because the main crew of actors are all high schoolers, and convincing ones. In fact, the strength of the whole thing depends on these kids, who are a great ensemble, smart and immature in turns and in unexpected gaffes and laughs. It's almost fun enough watching them to get through the rest.
But there is the rest, which is combination E.T. (quite literally, an alien wanting to go home) and the "Andromeda Strain" (where the military rushes in to face an extraterrestrial force, revisited recently in "The Crazies" in 2010). The highlight for me was the last part, where a nostalgically sweet small town suburbia goes into a colorful apocalypse. Never mind the improbability of the plot, the super spaceship, the monster with unreasonable (and not quite explained) powers, or even the history of such a thing going undetected until now, surviving surely on something besides nuts and berries.
In a very fun twist, there is at first a movie within a movie, where our high schoolers are making their own short and entertaining movie. That's where the title comes in (the time seems to be roughly 1975, before video). The train crash at the beginning is so excessive (it goes on forever, with enough burning and screeching for several movies) you know that something is amiss. And not just in the scene (this is no ordinary train) but in the direction (there is a woeful lack of balance). Pauses happen when there isn't time, and things are frenetic when a little pacing might have added more suspense and less kinetic frenzy.
This might all make it sound like a disaster of a movie rather than a disaster movie, but it's somewhere between. If you fit the demographic, it might work. If you don't mind sitting through some ludicrous moments for the much better ones, it does work (this would be me, Mr. Abrams). And if you like seriously inventive sci-fi disaster flicks, this won't quite cut it.