Review: Super 8

While watching Super 8, the Steven Spielberg-produced movie written and directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Lost), I may have been the only person in the audience thinking about author Robertson Davies. Specifically, this passage from his novel The Lyre of Orpheus, in which characters discuss the difficulty of putting together a libretto for an unfinished opera score:

"If you had to prepare this libretto, who would you rob? A poet, of course, but not a very well-known poet. And he would have to be a poet contemporaenous with Hoffman, and a fellow-spirit, or the work would ring false. And amid the work of that poet you would have to interpose a lot of stuff in the same spirit, because nobody wrote a libretto about King Arthur that is lying around, waiting for such an occasion. And the result would be --"

"Pastiche!"

"Yes, and the craft of the thing would be sewing up the joints, so that nobody would notice and denounce the whole thing as --"

"Pistache! Oh, you are a clever one!"

And that's Super 8 for you. J.J. Abrams is a clever one -- he's borrowed from the best sources and sewn up the joints beautifully in order to create a pastiche of 1980s movies, without sliding into parody or spoof. The movie is fun to watch even if you don't know the sources -- but unlike the libretto in Davies' novel, you can probably guess these influences easily (the movie's producer is a dead giveaway). In fact, you can have extra fun afterward coming up with descriptions like, "It's The Goonies squashed up with E.T. and Close Encounters," although that one is a little too obvious.

Pre-teenager Joe Lamb's (Joel Courtney) mom has just died, and he and his police-officer dad (Kyle Chandler) don't know what to do with themselves. Joe spends his days helping his friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) shoot a movie for a competition, with help from their buddies. They enlist a girl for one of the parts, Alice (Elle Fanning), and when they shoot her scene at the train station, they inadvertantly witness and film a very strange crash. After that, everything gets strange, and as Joe's dad tries to investigate, the kids get more and more anxious about what might happen.

The plot is relatively predictable, especially if you've seen the aforementioned influential movies. I felt almost annoyed with the "kids making a movie" storyline, which felt tired and frankly, was done better in Son of Rambow. Here I was reminded a little too much of the kids who remade Raiders of the Lost Ark shot-for-shot in the 1980s, which had to be an inspiration for this movie. I also rolled my eyes a couple of times at the unsubtle attempts to jerk nostalgic reactions not only about 1980s movies but the setting -- the movie is set in 1979 and never lets you forget it, from R. Crumb posters on the walls to news broadcasts about Three Mile Island. The ending was a bit too treacly for me as well, although I won't spoil it by naming the movies it reminded me of.

The surprise is that despite these shortcomings and occasional mild irrirations, it's easy to put it all aside and simply enjoy the ride. Super 8 has few familiar faces besides Kyle Chandler and the excellent Elle Fanning, which I appreciated. The kids are well-cast and their dialogue is one of the best things about Super 8. Cary (Ryan Lee), the kid who loves fireworks, reminded me favorably of Tanner in The Bad News Bears (the original, natch). Chandler is perfect as the policeman trying to be a good investigator and a better dad while still mourning his wife.

I'm a little sorry Super 8 isn't more PG and less PG-13 (a rating that was created due to some of the 80s movies being homaged, as I recall). This movie is on the cusp of being appropriate for kids -- but making it more accessible might mean leaving out the impressive and intense train crash, one of the best things I've seen in that line since the Algiers Ferry explosion in Deja Vu. If your kids can handle a certain amount of non-gory violence and explosions, they might be okay seeing this film -- there's no sex and apart from one instance of the f-word, I don't recall much profanity. I'd tell my brother it's okay to bring his 10-year-old son.

Super 8 may be one of the smarter movies opening in wide release this summer (although I preferred Bridesmaids if we're going to rank 'em all). Sure, it borrows from other films -- but it's borrowing from pretty good ones and it does this very well. Remember that J.J. Abrams managed to bring us a Star Trek reboot that entertained both fans and non-fans of the Trek universe. He doesn't do quite so well with Super 8, but I'd rather see a homage to Spielberg movies than another half-assed comic-book adaptation with the requisite CGI-intense battle scene at the end, or another unfunny sequel to a comedy for boys.

P.S. Stay through the credits for this one.

Austin connections: Ryan Lee, who plays Cary, is from Austin -- his sister Lauren Lee is in the local indie My Sucky Teen Romance. Kyle Chandler has spent a lot of time in Austin over the past five years, where he's starred in the TV show Friday Night Lights.