Film Review: Super 8

Super 8. Rated M (science fiction themes, violence, coarse language and drug use). 108 minutes. Written and directed by J J Abrams.

We’ve all experienced the misfortune of being trapped in a never-ending conversation at a party with the most boring guest in the room. You know the one: that person who bangs on for hours about every mundane possibility in their impossibly ordinary lives. But their big party trick is telling us a long-winded joke, with a punch-line that was never going to be worth the wait. And we dream of excusing ourselves before they start showing us holiday snaps or describing every detail of their kitchen renovations.

Welcome to the motion picture equivalent.

Perversely, given the talent involved, it is difficult to find more than a couple of moments of inspiration (or originality) in this seemingly interminable, muddled 108 minutes – such is Abrams clear intention to reference Steven Spielberg’s (credited as Executive Producer) back-catalogue of vastly superior films. An awkward air of self-reverential indulgence pervades practically every scene – not helped by the fact that the ‘kids making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera’ premise provides the movie with its only points of charm and genuine engagement.

15 year-old Joel Courtney makes an impressive acting debut as young Joe Lamb, whose mother dies in a workplace accident at the beginning of the film, and who finds solace in doing the make-up for the film project and a burgeoning relationship with Alice (the excellent Elle Fanning). When ET’s cranky relative turns up to wreak havoc, the authoritative adults arrive (in typical Spielberg fashion) to spoil all the fun.

Abrams screenplay rolls out the ‘your childhood’s over now kids’ metaphors at a hundred miles an hour – of which the spectacular train crash in the middle of their film shoot is one great big thundering, over-produced clunker (topped only by the tank rolling through the playground and crushing the swings scene).

One good thing to come out of it all though, is that you’ll have a ‘DVDs I want to watch again’ list as long as your arm. At the top of my list is Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age masterpiece Stand By Me – which is precisely the film that Super 8 is trying so desperately hard to be. Regrettably, it misses the mark by a long shot.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.