Super 8

Review by Anthony Morris

Quick quiz : how important to you are the 80s era kid-friendly films of Steven Spielberg?

Because if you've been spending every day since the end credits rolled on The Goonies wishing that someone in Hollywood would recapture that blend of action and soft-focus nostalgia then this is your lucky day - Super 8 has arrived!

If, on the other hand, your cinematic touchstones come from another place and time… well, we'll get to that.

The year is 1979 (not that they come out and say it, but you can figure it out), and Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is struggling under the double burden of a mother who died in an industrial accident and a sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler) whose idea of good parenting is to ship him off to football camp when all he wants to do is make a cheesy zombie film with his friends.

It's while filming a scene for said horror film  - he's in charge of make-up, giving him plenty of opportunity to get close to the female lead / tomboy / girl with a mysterious link to his family Alice (Elle Fanning) – that the friends witness a spectacular train derailment.

Well, not so much witness as have it happen right on top of them (cue somewhat overdone effects sequence), and if that wasn’t enough it soon becomes clear that there’s a much deeper mystery going on.

Why did their High school science teacher derail the train?

Why is the Air Force taking over the town?

Why did all the dogs run away?

What’s up with the weird power fluctuations?

And… actually, there's no mystery at all that some kind of monster's on the loose, because that's just the kind of movie this is. And how much you'll enjoy Super 8 depends a lot more than usual on how much you like this kind of movie, because this is a carefully designed and targeted appeal to fans of Spielberg’s 80s-era work.

So much so, in fact, that if you don't feel a tug at the heart strings just at seeing loveable kid stereotypes messing about on their own in a small town where things are dangerous (but not too dangerous), then you’ll discover that a lot of this film is merely serviceable rather than great.

Director J.J. Abrams knows what he's doing – there's plenty of action, loads of creepy moments, and the kids are all good - but it never feels like he feels it in his gut.

He's playing by someone else's rulebook, someone else's nostalgic vision of growing up, and as a result this lacks a little of the heart it so sorely needs.

3.5  out of 5

Super 8
Australian release: 9th June, 2011
Official Site: Super 8
Cast: Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Ron Eldard, Noah Emmerich, Gabriel Basso, Joel Courtney, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills and Amanda Michalka.
Director: J.J. Abrams