Super 8 Released 5 August 2011 Director J.J. Abrams Starring Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso, Zach Mills, Jessica Tuck Writer(s) J.J. Abrams Producer(s) J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Steven Spielberg Origin United States Running Time 112 minutes Genre Mystery, sci-fi, thriller Rating 12A

80

Super great.

I don’t often get reminded of French desserts while watching movies (Chocolat being the obvious exception), but I couldn’t help but think of the classic Mille-Feuille (translation: a thousand leaves), the Gallic pastry, on viewing J.J. Abrams’ latest. Super 8 a film so multi-layered, indulgent, and sweet, I nearly got fat watching it.

Set in a classic 1979 Ohioan suburbia, complete with whitewash picket fences, manicured, verdant lawns, children, in packs, cycling down wide, sunny streets, sparsely populated by parked Cadillac’s and Chevrolet’s, Super 8 tells the story of a boy, Joe, and his father who have just lost their wife/mother in an accident. Four months later as Joe and his friends pursue their hobby of making Super 8 films, they witness a train crash that, it becomes apparent, has more sinister implications than first supposed. It is at various times a coming-of-age story, science-fiction, disaster movie, horror, romance and thriller.

Super 8 is an homage to big movies, but big movies which have at their core, great storytelling. The title of the film (Super 8’s were a type of home-movie camera, released in 1965, designed with amateur home movies in mind) could be seen as a reminder of the enthusiasm and simple storytelling that Abrams must believe is crucial to creating memorable cinema. He is a director/writer clearly in thrall to Spielberg and this could be seen as an elaborate love-letter to Steve (which may have proved a little awkward considering he was the producer of this film). Echoes of Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, Indiana Jones and ET are all here, but the fawning doesn’t stop there. There are Hitchcockian flourishes (check out a turning gas station sign’s timely concealment of a massacre), references to George Romero and the Aliens franchise (Alien was released in 1979, the year in which Super 8 is set, and 2011 happens to be the 25th anniversary of sequel Aliens) and a whole host of other cinema clichés (diner scenes, the cop who just won’t let it go).

Of course this kind of reference-heavy reverence could lead to accusations of derivation and unoriginality. Is this indulgent? Yes it is. Is this worthwhile? Yes it definitely is. Because while, undoubtedly, Abrams is having enormous fun with this film, he is also making a point about the deterioration of cinema, especially big movies and he uses Spielberg as a reference point. Abrams gets away with this lofty comparison because, like Spielberg, he is able to capture that childhood feeling of cycling around on your bike in summer. This nostalgia is an effective counter-point to the dark turn the movie takes subsequently.

Indeed, the early part of the film, where we get to hang out with the kids while they are filmmaking, is so skilfully done that when it starts to take a darker turn and the train crashes; one feels disappointed because you know the film will never be the same again. The director uses the score and the weather to rather ham-fistedly help tell the story, but it is all effective and makes for a proper movie experience.

The scenes involving the children are so funny and enjoyable, special praise has to go to Abrams and the child actors for this achievement. The erubescent Joe, played by Joel Courtney, Alice, played by Elle Fanning (sister to the more famous Dakota) and the scene-stealing Charles, a would be Tarantino/Scorcese played by Riley Griffiths, deserve much plaudits for their performances.

The relationship between Alice and Joe is particularly impressive. While a romance involving early teens might be seen as limited, in Super 8, the director makes it work for him. Like with Dawn and Tim in The Office (Abrams is friends with Ricky Gervais), every gesture and interaction becomes super-charged and very intimate, as the audience knows there won’t be anything overtly sexual for obvious reasons. When Joe applies make-up to Alice’s face it feels like the famous scene from Ghost. And when Alice, pretending to be a zombie, stalks Joe and endeavours to suck his blood, it really is quite touching. It is these terrifically innovative ideas where Abrams really puts his stamp on what can sometimes feel like a familiar movie.

The themes are many and worth ingesting. While it is obviously about family, relationships, childhood and filmmaking, their are also sub-themes about environmentalism (the recycling of all the scrap metal in the town to construct a beautiful spaceship), America’s response to 9/11 (another anniversary) and the impact America’s wars have had on local populations (“through pain and a lack of compassion, he ended up hating us all”).

Super 8 is also very funny. There are many laugh out loud moments, one of my particular favourites being when Donny, having over-indulged in the Mary-Jane, is struggling to drive, and one of the children says, "He is too stoned to drive", to which another cries, "Drugs are so bad". Priceless.

On the negative side, I feel the viewer never got the sense that anything bad was going to happen to the main characters, thus maybe the tension wasn’t what it could have been. A sacrificial lamb perhaps, would not have harmed anything other than the lamb itself. Also, the train crash, I felt was a little over the top. It would have given survivors of Hiroshima déjà vu.

I would recommend everyone to go see Super 8. Its veneer is enjoyable in its own right, while it also has surprising depth to satisfy the more cerebral among you. Enjoy.

- Eoin Murphy