The Summer Cineaste: Super 8 [Review]

Super 8 is the first film by writer-director J.J. Abrams not part of a preexisting franchise -- after rebooting the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek series respectively, it seems the time has come for the TV guru and blockbuster auteur to branch out into more heartfelt territory. With Super 8, he clearly succeeds, although calling the film completely original might be a bit of an overstep.

First and foremost, this is Abrams' homage to the wave of genre family films from the early 1980s, and especially those made by Steven Spielberg, whose company Amblin co-produced the movie along with Abrams' own Bad Robot (the Amblin logo, complete with the now-iconic moon silhouette of Elliott and E.T. on a bike, fittingly opens Super 8). In the first scene we are introduced to Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a preteen boy whose mother has just died. The absence of one parent is a familiar family film device (think Disney), but here it seems to hearken back particularly to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg's films often used a sci-fi device as a metaphor for bringing the nuclear family closer together, and that inspiration is clear here. Other similarities: Joe's friend Charles' noisy and chaotic home-life is reminiscent of Elliott's, scary government officials in uniforms are the main baddies who set up camp in the quiet residential town, etc.

To be sure, this heavy and pervasive sense of homage makes Super 8 feel like something of a cross between E.T. and The Goonies, but it would be unfair to dismiss it as completely derivative. Abrams clearly has a whole lot of love for his child protagonists, and it is in their dynamic that the film truly stands out. While shooting an 8mm zombie film for a regional film fest (some of the movie's best and funniest scenes), Joe, Charles, Alice (Elle Fanning), and their friends witness a truck veer off the road and slam into a train passing by their shooting location. After this initial set piece (loud, scary, and fun) sets the plot rolling, Abrams takes his time to develop his characters in amazingly realistic dialog scenes that far outshine the movie's more alien moments. In fact, the titular 8mm film holding the key to the mystery takes up until the final act of the film to get back from the developing lab, leaving most of the run time dedicated to the more personal problems that make up the kids' lives. Newcomer Joel Courtney carries the lead role with perfect sensitivity -- his tender budding romance with Elle Fanning and rapport with his friends is the perfect adolescent mixture of nerves, sweetness, and inexperience. It's a great credit to Abrams too, that he should match his muse Spielberg's talent for directing kids.

It is in its more plot-heavy moments that Super 8 wanes, with the climax in particular coming out of nowhere. Some questionable (and given the tone, incompatible) CGI, along with a few over-extended subplots stretch out the middle act past its capacity, but again, the purely relatable and lovable protagonists are enough to push through the clutter. Super 8 is at its best, like its inspirations, when working as a simple story about kids overcoming adolescence through sci-fi impetus, and Abrams occasionally oversteps his own lines to try to include too much into what is an otherwise tight film. In these more bloated moments the movie loses steam, appearing as an early-Spielberg homage with late-Spielberg problems. Predictable and derivative aren't inaccurate words, but its hard to use them too harshly against a movie with its heart so firmly set in the right place.