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 It’s
difficult to decide which of the many Steven Spielberg productions Super
8 most reminds one of. There are so many déjà vu moments over the
film’s 112-minute run; viewers might wonder if there are any left out?
Maybe not The Colour Purple, Schindler’s List or Munich, but surely
everything else is here including Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T., Jurassic
Park and Spielberg satellites like The Goonies, Poltergeist and
Gremlins, making for a summer movie that’s made up of parts of some of
the best summer movies ever made.
It’s
1979 and a young boy from an Ohio steel town mourns the shocking death
of his beloved mother and frets for the life he’ll have with his distant
dad. Joe’s only respite from misery are his exactingly-rendered model
kits and his work on a pal’s amateur zombie movie. In the generation
before Iphones, Ipads and every other I-thing, the mediums of the age
are home movie cameras and reels of Super 8 film. Joe and his pack of
geeky school pals approach their calling with utter seriousness, casting
Alice, the local teen Venus in a role that was conjured the instant she
said yes and employing every serendipitously-placed exciting backdrop
they chance upon. While shooting at the town’s train station, the
guerilla filmmakers get footage any Hollywood studio would kill for --
and some military agents, too. A pick-up truck goes all Kamikaze into
the front of a speeding train, setting off a cataclysm of Spielbergian
proportions. The domino-effect explosions, flaming cars and debris
flying everywhere would be great to film if the kids weren’t running for
their lives. Once the immediate terror has passed, young Joe’s ears are
tuned to a loud thumping coming from one of the cars; a curiosity that
gets lost in all the excitement of trying to find his pals and fleeing
the scene of their illicit night shoot. In the following days, Joe’s
humdrum little town gets a lot weirder. All the neighbourhood dogs have
flown the coop, electricity flickers on and off at will, copper power
lines vanish, leaving homes in the dark and that’s not the only thing
disappearing. Joe’s dad, Jackson, the town deputy, finds himself the
figure everyone is looking to in their panic as his sheriff and several
residents have gone missing. Jackson isn’t particularly comfortable
with the overbearing presence of a tight-lipped Air Force obviously
looking for something, but won’t share what. It’s okay, Joe and his
pals are figuring it out and when that secret is revealed, it’s far
beyond anything even their most cinematic imaginations could ever dream
up.
While
no one is going to be particularly surprised by Super 8, it’s a lot of
fun. As I mentioned, it’s all terribly familiar; punctiliously
following the Spielberg textbook to the point of blurring the lines of
homage. We have the young son suffering the loss of a parent, general
daddy issues, frightened children, mysterious happenings in the midst of
a small town, sweeping panoramas of said bucolic existence, all sort of
seventies-favoured fish-eye camera lens fun, and a scary monster that
isn’t revealed until the last act. Joe’s deputy dad is the late Roy
Scheider’s Sheriff Brody-lite; the man no one believes in, but is forced
to play hero. After the train wreck, Joe and his friends run from a
flashlight-wielding military team and spend much of the film bicycling
furiously away from danger, just like in E.T. Lights going on and off
and strange things happening in suburban homes can’t help but recall
Poltergeist. The group of chatty nerds off on a perilous adventure they
can’t tell the adults about tries to bring back the camaraderie of The
Goonies, but there’s not a Ke Huy Quan in the bunch, nor is Joel
Courtney, cute though he may be, engaging enough to fill Sean Astin’s
denim jacket or Henry Thomas’ red hoodie. Alice, the femme fatale of
the piece is played by Elle Fanning, whose smoky eyes, flaxen locks and
killer zombie imitation practically forces Joe’s voice to change
overnight. There are some bonafide thrills in Super 8, like the train
crash that never ends and the unexpected extraction of an Air Force team
from a transport vehicle. It’s certainly enough to validate the price
of a ticket to see it onscreen, but with few exceptions, those chases,
crashes and frights aren’t particularly memorable. Neither, I predict,
is Super 8’s creature; a hybrid of a bat, a Predator and the whatever it
was from the Abrams’-produced Cloverfield going into the annals of great
Hollywood monsters, like the ones in Joe’s model kits. You want scary,
unforgettable creatures; watch Bruce the shark in Jaws next time it’s on
cable: Made on a far more primitive scale and costing a lot less than
the CGI thingy here, that rubber fishie single-handedly killed seaside
tourist trade worldwide that year. You want cute, clever youngsters
joining together against a common foe, go rent The Goonies, the kids are
better actors and the theme song’s fabulous. Or if you prefer the cute
kids with alien combo, there’s the box office phenomenon called E.T.
Any of these choices are imminently more standout than the proceedings
here, but it is a high bar to reach. It does speak volumes that the
audience seemed to be more entertained by the kids’ completed zombie
short running alongside the end credits than most of what occurred
during the actual film. There’s not an awful lot that’s memorable or
original about Super 8, but as empty summer blockbusters go, it’s a good
one and you’ll have a fun time while you’re there.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
June
10th, 2011
PS:
Fun for the sticklers - The Rubik’s cube referenced by one of the kids
wasn’t patented in the US until 1980 and we’re walking a fine line with
Sony Walkman availability. Details, details.
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