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Martin (Gabriel Basso), left, Cary (Ryan Lee), Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) witness a terrible train derailment in “Super 8.” |
The kids in J.J. Abrams’ science-fiction thriller “Super 8” are so personable, so funny, so transparent and so real that it feels like a distraction when a hokey, angry extraterrestrial drops in on them to create some spectacular mayhem.
“Super 8” is a mess, but an endearing, nostalgic mess that replicates vintage Steven Spielberg from the late 1970s.
If you’ve never seen Spielberg’s 1977 alien opus “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror show “Alien,” or Richard Donner’s 1985 kids’ adventure “The Goonies,” you’re in luck.
“Super 8” combines all three of them, plus tips its celluloid hat to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 mystery “Blow Up” in which a photographer inadvertently snaps a nefarious act.
Abrams, who directed 2009’s savvy “Star Trek” reboot, hasn’t achieved the stature of a Spielberg or a Scott. Not yet.
“Super 8” is at best a diminished duplicate of its obvious inspirations.
It emulates Spielberg’s style (awe-struck children’s faces, shadowy military figures, dramatically sweeping camera movements) so well that Abrams has little chance to put his own stamp on the work, just as Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist” looked like a Spielbergian clone.
“Super 8” takes place in 1979, set in the Ohio town of Lillian, a rusty, blue-collar version of Spielberg’s clean-cut, middle-class suburbia. (No coincidence, Spielberg served as executive producer here.) (Read more…)