SUPERB: a review of "Super 8"

“SUPER 8”
Written and Directed by J.J. Abrams
**** (four stars)

For many reasons, the year 1979 has remained a magical time for me.

In 1979, I was 10 years old and while I will never truly know for certain, perhaps I knew that year contained a certain significance even then. I was in the 5th grade, on the cusp of Middle School and while my life at that time moved along just as it had the year before, something inexplicable was definitely in the air. It was a time when I endlessly raced around my neighborhood with my friends on our bikes (without helmets!). It was a time when we played variations of kick ball and baseball in the back alley that separated our homes and the vacant lot at the end of the street. Electronic games were just new enough to be exciting without becoming socially alienating. And we just marveled at each other talents and skills (athletic, artistic, musical, etc) hoping that some particular brand of magic would rub off on us by osmosis. There were always unknown dark neighborhood tales designed to frighten us or the supposed threat of older kids lurking in the school hallways awaiting the fresh meat of young students but we endured without a sense of serious worry or real danger. Moreover, and throughout all of our days and nights, our parents seemed to behave as if they just knew that we would be entirely safe.

1979 was a time when my friends and I wanted to tread lightly into deeper societal waters from discovering and recounting the edgy humor of “Saturday Night Live,” Richard Pryor and Monty Python to utilizing dangerous usages of profanity with each other. We wanted to see who would be the first to witness an R rated movie or a “dirty” magazine. Emotional confusion and wounds began to feel more serious as 1979 also held the time when friendships carried a newfound sense of urgency and fragility. And of course, there were girls. During 5th grade, I did indeed hold a heavy crush on an angelic blonde girl in a downstairs classroom, a girl that I never found myself brave enough to confess my love to, and deciding to only tell one friend. All of that bubbling inner turmoil rubbed up against the trading of “Star Wars” baseball cards and knock hockey games in Mr. Wilson’s almost clubhouse feeling 5th grade classroom. The magic of that time clashed against the reality of the world, creating a period that can only be described as “transformative.”

“Super 8,” the third and best film to date from Writer/Director J.J. Abrams, is precisely in tune with that precariously transformative period as Abrams chronicles the lives and adventures of a group of Middle School students confronted with an event of sheer awesomeness. While Abrams more than delivers the special effects, tension, terror, and exhilaration, he smartly plunges firmly and unapologetically into the hearts of his protagonists, making “Super 8” a soulful and hugely rewarding experience to treasure.

Set in the small town of Lillian, Ohio in the year 1979, we met Middle School student Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), son of Jackson Lamb, the local Deputy Sheriff (Kyle Chandler), whose family has just been confronted with a personal tragedy: the death of Joe’s Mother in an unfortunate accident at the local mill. As he carries his Mother’s necklace constantly, Joe confronts his grief and healing process by enlisting his skills with make-up artistry for the on-going film projects of his best friend Charles (a terrific Riley Griffiths in his film debut), an aspiring Writer/Director engulfed with his latest masterwork, a George A. Romero inspired zombie film.

With the diminutive, braces wearing pyromaniac Cary (Ryan Lee), analytical and nervous stomached leading actor Martin (Gabriel Basso) and the meticulous Preston (Zach Mills) in tow, the group enlists the aid of the more mature, darkly evasive and initially reluctant Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) as their film’s leading lady. This choice not only begins to create confusion and conflict between the boys but also between Joe’s Father and Alice’s father Louis (Ron Eldard), an alcoholic Jackson blames for the death of his wife.

After midnight one summer evening, the kids travel just outside of town to a small train station to film a pivotal sequence when suddenly a passing train collides with a pick-up truck resulting in a spectacular crash our heroes not only narrowly escape but inadvertently capture on film via Charles’ super 8 camera.

To reveal any more about the contents of the train and the remainder of the “Super 8” would be deeply unfair to you. But, the film is a ride that is simply and jointly spectacular, terrifying and enormously moving. As with Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” from last month, J.J. Abrams has stunningly crafted the very type and style of summer movie that I salivated over in my youth and is rarely and sadly produced these days. A film that focuses on character, story and the art of storytelling, allowing the audio/visual special effects to serve as enhancements to the base material and not as the sole reason the movie exists.

In large portions, “Super 8” is Abrams’ intentional nod to the early films of Steven Spielberg (who serves as Executive Producer here) like “Jaws” (1975),” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) as well as his productions for Tobe Hooper’s “Poltergeist” (1982) and Richard Donner’s “The Goonies” (1985). Abrams has the visual landscape down cold! The foggy glow of lights at night, the crane shots, the slow pans upwards into people faces regarding tremendous sights are all on display. Even composer Michael Giacchino’s fully representative film score echoes the works of Spielberg’s musical counterpart John Williams.

Additionally, Abrams works in the “Spielbergian” themes of sleepy small towns and suburban landscapes populated with ordinary people suddenly confronted with extraordinary events and government conspiracies as well as the painful emotional turmoil of fractured families, lonely children and damaged parents.

The period design (including the—gulp—period music…man it pains me to say that) of the film is impeccable and on the same superior level of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” (1997), Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” (2009) and especially Judd Apatow and Paul Feig’s “Freaks and Geeks” television series. But, best of all are the team of young actors Abrams has cast. These young actors feel so authentic, so true to the time of 1979 that they almost feel as if Abrams instilled the usage of a time machine, plucked them straight from that year and plopped them into his 2011 film. They are all appropriately gawky and appear to be like the contemporaries or younger siblings of the characters in Michael Ritchie’s “The Bad News Bears” (1976) or Peter Yates’ beautiful and seminal “Breaking Away” (1979).

The performances from all of the young actors are completely naturalistic, freshly delivered and completely at home amidst the special effects (the train crash sequence, for instance, is a jaw dropper in a film filled with excellent action set pieces) and grand set designs. Most positively, they are also able to hold their own alongside the adult actors. Elle Fanning shows that she has the exact same incredible acting chops as her older sister, a trait Abrams utilizes wonderfully in an early scene when her character of Alice, acting in the kids’ movie, surprises all of the boys with her innate talent that stretches beyond her years. Fanning creates a solid distance between herself and the boys that not only illustrates her sad home life but also her advanced sense of development in comparison to the boys.

As Charles, Riley Griffiths completely transcended any pitiful expectations of witnessing yet another “funny fat kid” as he brilliantly creates the role of a frustrated and intensely creative mind at work. I completely admired his tenacity and the seriousness with which he and his friends took to their filmmaking craft. On a personal level, their cinematic journeys brought me back to a time during my own adolescence when I made a film with friends in high school entitled “Life In One Day” (extensively detailed in another posting on this site).

What we are witness to are kids that are not screwing around with a camera. They are seriously attempting to make a film in the very best way they possibly can, much like those scrappy guerrilla neighborhood filmmakers in Michel Gondry's underrated "Be Kind Rewind" (2008). And it should be noted that I feel this depiction should place established filmmakers on notice. That those with the finances, creative ability and blessed fortune to make movies should care as much about the art of filmmaking with their millions of dollars just as a group of kids do with a simple super 8 camera and tiny budget of allowance money.

Joel Courtney is the film’s rock solid center and heart much like Henry Thomas effortlessly showed in “E.T.” For someone who essentially has to carry the film and is shown in nearly every scene, Courtney is up for the immense task and through his open-hearted delivery, I found myself wanting to follow him anywhere while also wishing for his safety and healing.

Despite all of the “Spielbergian” touches, “Super 8” is no mere exercise in style as this is clearly a J.J. Abrams film. He has a story to tell and he tells it vibrantly and personally. Knowing that Abrams is three years older than myself and experienced the same cultural (pop and otherwise) touchstones as I did, Abrams utilizes the year of 1979 as a benchmark moment in time, a point of fundamental change in the lives of the characters. The same fundamental juxtapositions and pivotal moments of transformative change serve as the structure and core of the film as a whole. On one level, what is “Super 8” but a big budget version of the exact same film our pre-teen heroes are creating? Even deeper, Abrams is equally concerned with childhood terrors and things that go bump in the night as much as he is concerned with adult themes of mortality, grief and mourning. One side never outweighs the other. They co-exist seamlessly.

The title of “Super 8” means so much more to me than a description of a particular film stock. It is representative and celebratory of a specific time, place and year when children were allowed to be children and roam their exterior and interior worlds freely. “Super 8” is an ode to childhood itself and the innocence, imagination and sense of possibility contained therein. This film does not possess one jaded or ironic bone in its cinematic body. It values the experience of pre-pubescent growth so tenderly while also eliciting many jolts, shocks and excitement along the way. “Super 8” believes in these kids fiercely and with the endless hope that they will all be able to develop, change, confront and survive their fears while maintaining their integrity and also gaining new levels of self-confidence in the process.

Wonderfully, “Super 8” represents a time when summer movies could also be works of art and stand as one of the cinematic year’s best achievements. There have always been bad movies and there always will be bad movies, but “Super 8” is representative of an era when summer films of this particular high quality were the norm, not the anomaly. While the overarching mysteries of the contained element inside the train are fully revealed and deeply satisfying, what matters the very most to Abrams, and therefore the audience, are these kids, their relationships with each other, their families and with themselves.

On television, with "Lost," "Alias" and "Fringe," in addition to creating the best installment of the "Mission: Impossible" film series with "Mission: Impossible III" (2006) as well as his astonishing re-invention of "Star Trek" (2009), J.J. Abrams has more than shown that he is a creative force to be reckoned with. Not through pummeling an audience with window dressing but with sheer and unquestionable storytelling strength.

“Super 8” is a meticulously designed pastiche, an homage to one of cinema’s greatest storytellers while also existing as a deeply personal statement of the child J.J. Abrams once was and frankly, still remains. It is a film that works in solidarity with anyone who continues to imagine, to hope and to dream.

"Super 8" is one of my favorite films of 2011.