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'Super 8': the mystery revealed?
‘What is Super 8?’ has been the question on every nerd’s lips for over a year now. Since the first, enigmatic trailer emerged, offering brief glimpses of train crashes and alien escapes, and naming its director as JJ Abrams, international master of mystery following his success with ‘Lost’, audiences have been clamouring to know more
Gradually, details began to emerge. The film would be Abrams’s tribute to his cinematic hero Steven Spielberg (who produces 'Super 8'). It would be a rites-of-passage tale set in a small 1970s town, where a group of movie-obsessed kids come up against an alien force, and an ensuing military invasion.
And while British audiences will frustratingly have to
wait until August 5 to find out all the answers, ‘Super 8’ will be
released in America this weekend, and early reviews are looking positive. The film currently has an 82 per cent rating on aggregate website Rotten
Tomatoes – though that could just mean the reviews have been generally decent,
not necessarily glowing.
Our own Time Out New York review by Joshua Rothkopf certainly bears this out, giving the film a reasonable three stars but bemoaning its ‘depressing lack of intellectual heft’ and describing it as a ‘shrieky adventure’.
As with most reviews of the film, Rothkopf takes pains not to go too deeply into the nature of the alien menace threatening our heroes, though some articles do seem to suggest that the monster's escape is not an accident. Reading between the lines, it also seems that the alien angle is very much secondary to Abrams’s intention to make a movie about kids coming of age, and so the idea that 'Super 8' is an ‘Alien’-style monster-on-the-loose horror flick may, in fact, be a red herring. Might this monster just be misunderstood?
Perhaps the most glowing review comes from Time Magazine’s
Richard Corliss ,
who calls it ‘the year’s most thrilling, feeling mainstream movie’. Also on
side is Jo Blo’s JimmyO , who
calls it ‘a thrilling return to movie magic of old, filled with wonder, horror
and chills’.
But few reviewers are so openly enthusiastic: the overall opinion seems to be that while ‘Super 8’ has charm and talent to spare, it’s a little too nakedly obsessed with recreating that nostalgic, Spielbergian world of childlike wonder. The film’s handful of outright bad reviews – such as from Peter DeBruge at Variety – focus largely on its lack of new ideas, and even some of the positive reviews feel that the film would have been stronger had it possessed a little more originality: Jim Jejvoda at IGN praises the film’s craft but feels that ‘it's filled with one too many Starlog Magazine references’, while Todd McCarthy at The Hollywood Reporter agrees that ‘the ingredients are pure Spielberg from the first ten-15 years of his career’.
But these seem like fairly minor quibbles: the overall
critical response is overwhelmingly positive, and shouldn’t dampen audience
anticipation in advance of the film’s UK release. We will, of course, be
running a review when ‘Super 8’ finally hits our screens, so watch this space
(if you’re not too busy watching the skies…).
Author: Tom Huddleston
User comments on this story
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- TeamConlon said...
- I took four boys ages 11-16 to see it at IMAX in San Francisco a week ago. For me, seeing small town America in the 1970s was a great memory throw back that adults who were in their teens at that time should enjoy since there were references today's teens wouldn't catch. The boys really enjoyed the movie since the characters were of the same age, mostly boys, and had enough technology and suspense to keep them caught up in the plot, which I attribute to JJ Abrams. Being at IMAX just made it easier to loose ourselves in the story since the size and sound is fantastic. The movie is definately Spielburg-esk and has the familiar feel of several of his other pictures, so if you don't like Spielburg or feel good "mid-teen" movies you are out of luck. But if you like the magic Spielburg creates and the style of JJ Abrams, not to mention a retro 70s trip, then you will like this movie... the boys and I did. Posted on Jun 27 2011 03:58
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- taffwah said...
- I thought this was an average film has all been done before, except with out the charm of the goonies or stand by me etc. It seemed to drag on a bit for me after a good start. Posted on Jun 22 2011 21:50
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- Floppy Meringue said...
- Not sure of the current exchange rate but thirteen bucks fifty for a matinee looks like a bargain compared to London prices. The Empire in Leicester Square, for instance, is currently charging £12.50 for an early afternoon performance. Posted on Jun 14 2011 14:53
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- Godfrey Hamilton said...
- You really are speculating aren't you? OK, I just saw it at the Arclight Cinema here in Hollywood CA ($13.50 for a matinee, but there's no commercials to sit through and it *is* the most comfortable cinema in the world). Joshua Rothkopf in TO NYC is as usual talking through his arse. Super 8 is brilliant (what do you mean "what is Super 8"? It's a camera, the model that Derek Jarman so famously used for his early movies. Duh.) Elle Fanning is excellent. So is Kyle Stephens (woof!) There is a smashing performance by David Gallagher as the town's resident stoner. Joel Courtney - in the lead as the kid who's grieving his recently killed (in an accident at the steel mill) Mom - is just superb. And yes, steel mill. An American movie that places its heart and focus in and on the working/lower-middle class is something to celebrate these days. And yes, it spoils nothing to say that the escape of the Whatsit is not entirely accidental. To sum up - the movie is basically E.T. meets Romero's Crazies; there are significant homages to Romero's work throughout. The kids, in fact, are making a zombie movie to enter in a student film-making competition. It's a loud movie, there's a brilliantly executed train crash, the town is of course populated entirely by straight kids, no bullied gay teens here - and the sentimentalised underscoring irritates at key moments that ought to be hard-edged and understated (Courtney & Fanning watching home movies of the dead Mom, for instance). But overall, this is intelligent, terrific popular moviemaking, and I could go on and on about sub- and meta-text but why should I when TO ain't paying me. Oh, and one other thing - stay for the end credits ;-) Posted on Jun 14 2011 01:03
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- free watching now said...
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People are talk about <a href="http://freewatchingnow.com/super-8-2011-online/">Super 8</a>
Super 8's ending can spark criticism. I wasn't a favorite of it, but I really believe it's because both Abrams and Spielberg couldn't think of an effective way to conclude a film like this. Posted on Jun 12 2011 06:10 - Report as inappropriate
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