Super 8: Is it really super?
JJ Abrams plays part homage to Steven Spielberg and part franchise – and a little disappointing.
The affectionate tribute to Spielberg classics such as Close Encounters and ET, the weird hybrid is a slightly disappointing mystery adventure movie. On the posters is written as a Steven Spielberg movie, thus it is a part homage, part franchise operation.
Little things about the movie has been thoroughly created or recreated. For instance the homely suburban setting, whose housing sprawl is set across a valley or plain, which can be viewed, all at once, a group of kids keeping secrets from the grownups. Also, the use of a typical American diner with conversations of alien, almost paranormal topics, gives a Spielberg experience.
There is a group of kids. Each of them has a gimmick disguised as characterization. For instance, there’s a fat kid who says “Mint!” every five seconds, and kid with braces who seems to love fire, a pansy who vomits, and a protagonist who keeps his dead mom’s locket with him wherever he goes.
While JJ works his usual directorial magic on movies such as mission: impossible III and star trek – the casting is wonderful, the shots are skillfully composed – it’s just not enough. In the end this is a script that Abrams cannot overcome, and it drags him down until by the end of the film scenes that are supposed to be emotional peak is just an empty spectacle.
The problem with "Super 8" is not how much there is to complain about but how little there is to be excited about. Given the abilities of those accomplished names on the poster, that has got to be an anticlimax.
