Spielberg's fingerprints all over Abrams' '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.)
A well-cast ensemble is led by Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), son of a local deputy sheriff, Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler). Joe's mother has just been killed in an industrial accident, and Jackson blames local nogoodnik Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) for it.
Junior high school gets out for summer, and Joe volunteers to do makeup for a zombie film directed by his portly pal Charles (Riley Griffiths).
Their friend Martin (Gabriel Basso) stars as the story's intrepid detective. Cary (Ryan Lee) plays a zombie. Preston (Zack Mills) helps, too.
Then, in the casting coup of the century, Charles convinces the alluring Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) to play the detective's wife.
Joe's heart is aflutter, even though she's the disdained Louis Dainard's daughter.
How these kids interact — interrupting each other, launching clever put-downs and allowing no fleeting thought to go unspoken — is sheer “Stand By Me” quality.
Joe's moony-eyed infatuation with Alice is enchanting. Later, there's a romantic surprise, and ... the plot kicks in.
A night shoot at a train station becomes a disaster scene when a truck drives onto the tracks and rams head-on into a locomotive, resulting in a fiery train wreck (an homage to the train crash in “The Greatest Show on Earth”).
The kids flee, but their camera continues to shoot the scene of the wreck. It takes three days to get the footage processed. (Hey, it's 1979.)
What Joe and Charles see explains why the military has moved into Lillian under the command of the ruthless Colonel Nelec (reliable character actor Noah Emmerich).
“Super 8” recycles the overused single-parent background that provides cheap and easy sympathy for Joe.
A subplot in which the kids' science teacher (Glynn Turman) has a history with Nelec comes off clumsy and stretched. The alien's appearance — long delayed just as the shark was in “Jaws” — amounts to an underwhelming experience.
Abrams, a Spielberg protégé hired years ago to restore Spielberg's own 8 mm movies he made in his youth, has a knack for writing kids' dialogue, but not from the 1970s.
“This is awesome!” Joe shouts. Later, Charles says, “It's awesome!” He says it again. Still later, he shouts, “It's awesome!” Still later, he shouts, “You are awesome!”
Abrams apparently thinks the famous catchphrase was around long before Jeff Spicoli uttered it in 1982's “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Note: Stick around for the ending credits to “Super 8.” You'll see the entire zombie movie the kids have been working on all summer.
Actually, that is awesome.
<b>“Super 8”</b>
★ ★ ★
<b>Starring: </b>Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Noah Emmerich, Riley Griffiths, Gabriel Basso
<b>Directed by:</b> J.J. Abrams
<b>Other: </b>A Paramount Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for language and violence. 112 minutes.