Super 8

Director: J. J. Abrams
Writer: J. J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning
Release Date: June 10, 2011
Length: 1 hour 42 minutes

The extraordinary J.J. Abrams delivers another massive Sci-Fi hit with this year’s Super 8, a story set in 1979, where a group of 13-year-old friends witness a train wreck while filming a movie on a Super 8mm camera. The main character of the film is Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a boy who’s just lost his mother to a tragic industrial accident where she worked and lives with his strict dad, Deputy Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler). When school lets out for the summer, his best friend, Charles enlists Joe’s help for making his zombie movie and also tells him he got their beautiful classmate Alice Dainard to star in the movie, much to Joe’s happiness. Along with Alice, are their three best friends Preston, Martin and Carey who go along to the train stop to shoot their first scene. At the stop, Charles is in the middle of filming a scene, when Joe sees a car coming fast toward the train. The train erupts, sending fire and metal everywhere. When everyone has recovered and the tumult has come to an end, the group realizes this effect couldn’t have come from a regular crash. All of them being baffled by what just happened, go looking around the scene to figure out what’s going on. They find their schoolteacher, Mr. Woodward in the car that hit the train, miraculously still alive in his half of a car. When the kids see armed officials beginning to arrive though, they make a quick run to flee the scene. Although they make a pact to not tell anyone of what they saw, it becomes difficult when weird disappearances keep occurring in their town and the air force imposes an entire evacuation. Super 8 is similar to films like Stand By Me or E.T., where the very grown up story has a group of young kids as the main characters, who all create entertaining dialogue from their unique dynamic that adult actors cannot pull off. For whatever reason, having 13 year olds lead an adventure story for the audience has a refreshing effect on you. Putting yourself in their shoes truly makes everything a hundred times more electrifying in a bittersweet nostalgic way while being constantly bowled over by the sharp humor of the young actors and the brilliantly clever dialogue. This being Abrams’ first film he wrote the script for, you can feel his own childhood radiating through the film. As we know he was a 13-year-old filmmaker in 1979, he makes the characters and the setting wonderfully authentic. The humor that comes from these kids causes you to go from screaming to laughing within seconds in an exciting scene. That is what truly set Super 8 a part from the other action or sci-fi movies this summer. The only thing you need with a fantastic script is a cast to back it up and when it comes to a film led by 13 year olds, the cast can make or break the movie. Abrams’ acquired a hell of a group of kids to make Super 8 what it’s worth. Newcomer Joel Courtney leads the pack of kids as the intelligent, slightly serious Joe Lamb and he was a wonderful choice to carry the film. Courtney makes ed us sympathize for the loss of his mother and adore his relationships with both his best friend Charles and his sweet crush Alice with his natural performance as a sorrowful introverted kid. What I like about the way Abrams’ wrote the relationship between Joe and Alice is that it’s not made to just be adorable. They are not little kids you dote on for having crushes on each other. The way their friendship and adoration grow for each other is realistic and complex, showing that thirteen year olds are more like young adults than children. Elle Fanning from Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and soon to be in Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixtwas exceptional as Alice Dainard, a beautiful girl who’s truly perfect for Joe. Playing a child who continuously must care for her drunken father, Fanning’s performance is perfectly complicated and poignant. Fanning is one of the many young actresses along with Kick Ass’ Chloe Moretz and True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld that we can look forward to in the years to come. Joe’s best friend Charles, the adorable as the slightly chubby wannabe zombie filmmaker is hilariously played by Riley Griffiths with his leader-of-the-pack director attitude on the film and the group. His friendship with Joe is quite sweet and together they lead the pack of uproarious kids. Ryan Lee is fantastic as the tiniest friend Cary obsessed with explosions and firecrackers, while Gabriel Basso is also entertaining as the cowardly aspiring thespian always worried about his lines and finally Zach Mills is very funny as the precocious intellectual Preston. Together the kids make a perfect ensemble but much of the movie is carried by the few adult actors, most importantly Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights as Joe’s father. Chandler is heartbreaking as a widower who is very confused about raising his son alone, whom he was never particularly close with. His failed efforts at creating a relationship and recovering from the tragic death are pitiful and you completely empathize with him despite his severe nature. Ron Eldred also gives a great performance as Alice’s deadbeat father and Noah Emmerich is mysteriously worrying as Nelec, the head of the air force supposedly helping the town with their disappearances. The visual effects of the film are - no surprise - exquisite with J.J. Abrams as the director and Steven Spielberg as executive producer, but the setting of 1979 rural America was also extremely well done and made for a perfect backdrop for the exciting sci-fi plot. Many argue that this film is a copy of E.T. or unoriginally too alike to Spielberg’s films, but I believe Abrams’ created a mysterious and creative story that is more of a retro throwback to Spielberg’s adventure film’s like E.T. Super 8 wonderfully covers everything you could possibly feel in a movie. It is melancholically sweet, constantly humorous, and terrifyingly exciting. With Star Trek and Super 8, Abrams’ just keeps growing as an innovative filmmaker and I cannot wait for what he has in store next. By far one of my favourite films of the year, Super 8 is this summer’s must-see.