Much has been said about the Spielberg connection in Super 8, and after watching it this weekend, the connection is hard to miss. Super 8 is a nostalgic piece of film-making, a love-letter of sorts for a time and place. For Spielberg and Abrams, that time and place is their formative years as fledgling film-makers, earnestly carrying their Super 8 camera around, recruiting all of their friends, and anyone else willing to participate, all for the dream of making a movie. I remember those years well myself, although I didn't have a camera to capture all the adventures I had, just my toys and a notebook, but more on that later.
The film itself centers around Joe Lamb, who has lost his mother in a work-related accident, and his friends. He and his friends are trying to make a zombie movie for a film contest, and each of them have his (and later her) specific role: Charles is the director, the one with the vision; Martin is the actor, and is fittingly more than a bit over dramatic; Preston does sound, camera, anything the director needs basically; Cary, the pyromaniac, is of course the special effects expert (good evidence that some children NEED creative outlets); Joe does makeup and miniatures; and the newest addition, Alice, plays the love the interest in the movie in order to "give the zombie movie more of a narrative flow." The rapport between all of these actors is very natural. There's even one scene at a diner that reminded me of the kind of back-and-forth from The Goonies, so much so that it many of its lines might have been improvised by the cast.
While the entire cast is very good (the weakest being Ron Eldard, who plays Alice's father), it is Joel Courtney in his feature film debut (and according to IMDB this is first acting gig) who is the anchor for the entire movie and he does a phenomenal job. If the audience didn't feel an emotional connection with Joe, then the rest of the film would have fell flat on its face, despite all the special effects work. Elle Fanning (Alice) also delivers a very good performance, and the relationship between Alice and Joe is treated with a tenderness that is quite touching. Kyle Chandler (Jackson Lamb, Joe's father) can show a world of pain or tenderness with the slightest alteration of his face; he's not in every scene, but he makes his scenes count.
The special effects are good, not fantastic, with the exception of the train sequence, but this film proves that special effects are the not the important part of any film, and an audience is willing to forgive sub-par work in the face of a good story (Just look at some of the shows on TV). Too often film-makers and producers feel that a special effects heavy film can run on autopilot, straight to the bank. Well, that may be true if all you're looking for is first-weekend sales. Super 8 is a film that remembers that good science-fiction and horror is never about the supernatural, but about the human. The appeal in sci-fi and horror, at least for me, is not in the aliens and monsters, but in how the human characters handle themselves in the face of fantastic circumstances. The supernatural elements are merely catalysts.
Indeed, this film brought back some wonderful memories. I was never a very brave person when it came to "putting myself out there." So, even though I wanted to create films I couldn't bring myself to do anything that would bring undue notice or criticism upon myself, which is why I'm not a good actor. Good acting requires a willingness to look stupid and I'm not willing. However, I did develop stories and movie ideas in the safety of my room with my action figures. The good thing about that scenario was if something didn't work, story-wise, I could go back and change it immediately. I played out whole movies in my bedroom. It was fun and liberating. When books and films weren't enough, or when I got frustrated because one or the other didn't go in the direction I wanted, I created something new, a story I wanted to experience.
Super 8, as stated above, is a love-letter to anyone, young or old, whose desperate passion to create something new is all-consuming, even when others don't fully understand. And even though all of its pieces didn't always work, I got swept up in the story and the characters, enjoying every minute of it.
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