Movie Review - "Super 8" (2011) ****

     The summer movie season used to be the best time of the year for me. You always had great action movies that even though they may not be the greatest movies in the world, they were just simply a heck of a lot of fun. I don't know what it is the last few years but I have just not been interested in the summer movies and find myself more drawn to the award season movies that tend to come out later in the year. I love both and wish I could bridge that gap but I just don't like the endless superhero, pirates, transformers type movies that have dominated the summer months in recent memory. Every once in awhile something surprises me, like The Dark Knight, but usually these movies are just headache inducing sound machines that have no character development to speak of. And it is this last fact that bothers me the most as I am seeing it more and more in cinema where almost zero attention is giving to writing good characters. How can I care about Transformers tearing up the world if I have no emotional attachment to the people running from these behemoths? Yeah, it may look cool, but who cares. I certainly don't. Which makes a movie like the just released Super 8 a breath of fresh air and gives me hope that the summer movie season still has a solid future.
     Super 8 takes place in 1979 and tells the story of a group of children who are making a monster movie utilizing a Super 8mm camera (hence the title of the film). One night while filming at an abandoned train station, they get their opportunity at a great shot when a train unexpectedly appears in the distance. They get everything set up and start shooting the scene when one of the kids sees a pickup truck get in the path of the train, causing a massive train wreck which destroys just about everything in the immediate area. After collecting themselves and realizing that everyone is safe, the kids find the driver of the truck still alive and he also happens to be a teacher at their school. He warns the kids to not speak of this incident and makes them leave as it appears a military convoy is coming towards the crash scene. The kids leave, narrowly escaping the military personnel, but before they do they realize that some of the cargo of the train is strange and one of them takes a cube object home. In the following days around town, weird things start to happen such as power outages, missing car engines and all of the towns dogs appear to go missing. There also seems to be a creature of some sort terrorizing the town, but we only get very brief and unclear images of it. What is creating havoc in this town and why is the military taking over the immediate area? I could tell you but of course I won't as the journey to these answers is a joy to take.
     If you have read or seen any reviews of Super 8 you almost certainly have seen mention of this film being an homage by the director JJ Abrams to his idol, Steven Spielberg, who is a producer on this film. I have seen this mentioned numerous times....and they are all absolutely right. This is definitely a Spielberg-type film and Abrams, creator of my favorite tv show of all time "LOST", does justice to the Spielberg name. There are many references and nods to Spielberg films, some are subtle but most are staring you right there in the face. I think the movies I picked up the most connection to while watching are definitely E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Jaws but one that I think really stands out that I don't see mentioned much is Jurassic Park. There are definitely a couple of scenes that stand out where I thought I was watching Park for a minute, and that's a good thing to me. Abrams is still fairly new to the directing world but he received a lot of praise for his Star Trek reboot (not seen by me for obvious reasons if you know me!!) and I thought Mission: Impossible 3 was a lot of fun. But with Super 8 on his resume now he has established himself as a director that is entering his prime and is hopefully ready to continue the Spielberg tradition of storytelling.
    Abrams is great and this movie would not be the same without him directing, but the highlight of this movie for me was the cast, most notably the kids. While most are given equal screen time, it's pretty evident from the beginning of the movie that newcomer Joel Courtney is the primary lead as Joe Lamb. As the movie opens, Joe has lost his mother in an accident and he is trying to get by in life with his father Jackson, played by the superb Kyle Chandler (his lead role in the show Friday Night Lights may be one of the best tv fathers of all-time). Jackson is a police deputy in the small Ohio town where the story takes place and is struggling to raise his son alone. The bond these two have as father and son plays a key role in the emotional elements of the movie. If they don't work well together, this movie would not work well. They obviously do. Riley Griffiths is Charles, the boy who is making the film that the kids are shooting. He is bossy like a typical director but he provides some good laughs in the movie and I really enjoyed seeing him work. Zach Mills, Gabriel Basso and Ryan Lee also have roles as Preston, Martin and Cary, respectively. Lee's Cary is especially great as the kid who provides special effects for the film. I think most of us growing up knew a kid in school who liked to play with fire and explosive things just a little too much. Cary is that kid here and that personality trait provides some great laughs in the film. All of these boys are great, but we can't forget the lone girl in the group, Alice, played by the beautiful and extremely talented Elle Fanning (sister of Dakota Fanning). Fanning is simply wonderful here as a balancing act to the boys in the film. The chemistry she displays with Joel Courtney early in the film gives me a lot of hope for the future of actors and actresses. All of these kids make this movie work because of what I mentioned at the start of the review.....we CARE about them. For the most part we get to know them individually and we are sympathetic to what they have witnessed and are experiencing in their small hometown. As is typical of a Spielberg film, the kids seem to know more than the adults in the film and that is perfectly fine. It worked in such great films like E.T. and The Goonies, just to name two.
     Super 8 is a brilliant kick-off to this years summer movie season. I hope there will be other films that have the same passion and heart. Yes, there is something out there, and it is loud and dark and scary. The action in this movie is definitely summer movie worthy and can be very intense at times. I would not recommend this for very young children. But families with kids in the 8-10 range and up can definitely find a movie here they will enjoy watching as a family. That is what summer movies are all about. I am refraining from giving this movie an extra star for a couple of different reasons. While I enjoyed the ending, I think it could have been a little bit better and there were also a couple of times in the middle when I found myself looking at my watch a couple of times but these were mainly during the military scenes. When the kids are on screen, the movie is solid, unfortunately there are times when they are not. But don't let these couple of negatives dissuade you, I give this movie a very high recommendation.