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Super 8, decent family fare for older kids but . . .

Posted by Daryl Zero (A) on June 11, 2011 at 10:14:31

The wonder of a movie like this is that the kid element and absent parents nails the era. But there has to be a supernatural threat and an arbitrarily evil government guy to create action in a movie that doesn't need it. The action sequences are overblown and too Spielbergian in that there is too much danger for people to escape unscathed. The truck that runs headlong into a train that has a long catapult into the sky is barely wrecked and the driver oddly intact. Kids are too near explosions with flying debris to be completely missed. The combination of realism and then movie magic escapism doesn't ultimately work for me. The adults' relationships with the kids and themselves changes and resolves as plot points without much plausibility. There is a symbolic act of letting go which is too convenient in how it affects two beings.

This could have been a great movie about kids and yet it needed, for some reason, to be about the supernatural.

I don't intend to be that hard on it because it is an enjoyable summer movie. However, it could have been a great movie like Stand By Me but directors like Spielberg and unfortunately, Abrams, won't trust the human side to the story. I don't think it is one that I will see again.

Just want to add a couple of things. Elle Fanning is great in this movie. She has some moments in this movie that are amazing. The kid who played the director, Riley Griffiths does a great job. The lead kid, Joel Courtney, is fine but more reactive so I can't tell how good a job he did. I can tell you that I thought this character was almost a doppelganger for Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous.

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Herbie's Audio Lab

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