Super 8 Wins Big

Super 8, produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by JJ Abrams, tantalizes in its ads.

A group of adolescents witness a huge, fiery train crash inexplicably caused by a pickup truck — don’t trains usually just push cars along the tracks until they come to a stop? Then something sinister-looking comes out of the wreckage, accompanied by
strange events.

Though the trailers make it seem mysterious or deep, it’s your typical conspiracy sci-fi alien fare, wrapped and tied with the bow of Spielberg’s credibility.

Super 8 is not a bad movie by any means. The acting is well done and especially impressive among the motley crew of middle-schoolers that make up the main characters.

Elle Fanning’s performance as the seemingly unattainable Alice Dainard, the Juliet to Joel Courtney’s pubescent Romeo, is endearing. Courtney’s role as Joe Lamb also proves astonishing as he acts with a depth of emotion many adult actors struggle to find.

His baby face and perpetually wide-eyed amazement is endearing, and he tenderly conveys how a personal crisis — spoiler alert: the death of his mother in a freak factory accident — can overshadow even the most dire, possibly deadly crisis affecting an entire town’s existence — spoiler alert #2: in case you haven’t figured it out, there’s an alien on the loose.

Abrams idealizes the younger characters, showing them to be more intuitive, ingenious and more empathetic than their widely troubled adult counterparts.
The cinematography is beautiful, and the score perfectly composed. The movie is an ode of sorts: Abrams’ sweetly nostalgic love letter to the golden age of Spielberg and to the final summer of anyone’s true childhood that is untainted by the cynicism of
adulthood.

If you’ve seen any Spielberg movie, you’ll recognize most of the elements of the film that make it good; there’s nothing revolutionary here. Nevertheless, it capitalizes on the formula for a great summer film and succeeds in doing so.
 
The move is less about an alien than about a group of kids on the brink of their teenage years working through an awkward and, given the alien, literally terrifying time together. It’s Spielberg at his best, so why mess with a good thing?

By Kelly Fritz