You know how directors set a scene. They might show a group of characters in period clothing. They might have someone turn on the radio and listen to the song of the summer. They might have a television humming in the background, with an anchor detailing the world crisis that will tell you the exact year in which the movie takes place. J.J. Abrams does all of those things in the first 10 minutes of “Super 8.” And just in case that wasn’t enough, he uses another popular filmmaker’s trick — showing the dated gravestone of someone just-deceased — to make sure you know his film is set in 1979.
We’re meant to chuckle at the amateur quality of the film festival entry the young protagonists are making with the old-school camera of this movie’s title. But “Super 8,” despite its big-budget special effects, isn’t always that much more polished.
| On screen |
| ‘Super 8’ |
| 2.5 out of 5 stars |
| Stars: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler |
| Director: J.J. Abrams |
| Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language and some drug use |
| Running time: 112 minutes |
Many of the movie’s shots look like the work of a newbie trying very hard to make his film look “artistic.” Instead, the overstylization is distractingly strange.
It’s disappointing — Abrams’ very entertaining “Star Trek” was surprising in its cleverness. Perhaps the problem is that Abrams didn’t write “Star Trek,” but did write “Super 8.”
Still, nothing I say here is likely to keep away the film’s target audience. Yet “Super 8,” which was co-produced by Spielberg, is not so much an homage to a master, but a counterfeit copy of one of his originals.
Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has lost his mother, and consoles himself with building models and serving as the makeup artist and jack-of-all-trades to best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths), who has an ambitious plan to submit a monster movie to an Ohio film festival. The small-town crew gets more footage than it bargains for when a train crashes one night, and the camera captures a strange scene. As soon as the military enters the picture, we know a conspiracy is afoot.
The actors playing the kids are all quite good, especially Elle Fanning as a talented girl written into the movie, even though Joe’s father, played by Kyle Chandler, forbids him from seeing her. And there’s no denying the explosions and strange happenings have massive effect.
But we’ve seen this before in Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” and “The Goonies.” “Super 8” is nothing more than a throwback to these classics — just with better special effects.
