4 out of 5

Director: J.J. Abrams

Super 8 is almost amazing. As much as I want to brush J.J. off as a flashy idea man, he has proven with the many projects with which he’s involved that, yes, he has a firm grasp on how to sell to modern consumers, but also has firm experience from which to draw out more loving projects like Super 8. However, similar to his Star Trek film, all of the love in the world gets a little confused with effects and the need for Something Big, and it distracts from the magic that goes on in the first portion of the film. Through an incredibly intimate, patient, quiet opening, we learn that Joe’s mother has passed, and that his father isn’t well equipped to deal with now being a single parent and the town’s deputy. His attempts to guide Joe into a life of normal boyhood of baseball are thwarted by Joe’s desire to hang out with his best pals – a group of amazing kids who make movies together, Joe doing the makeup, one kid the special effects, one the director, etc. Their current project is a monster movie, and the amount of truth that comes across in how the boys put this together, what their influences are, how the timeperiod is portrayed, how they rope in Elle Fanning to play a female lead, are all so effective that you know J.J. is either drawing from experience or something damn close to it. Usual suspect Michael Giacchino contributes an amazing score that draws from 80s Goonies-esque films as well as Spielberg pieces and it’s just all something special. But it’s a modern movie, and it’s Abrams, so he wants to throw in something special. In this case it’s a monster that the Air Force is trying to track down. “Super 8” balances between wonder and action for the rest of its runtime, and it truly is a lot of fun. Though the whole thing is a tribute to a certain type of film, the tribute switches gears at this midpoint, and the latter half, stocked with flash and bang, is just that much less heartfelt when compared to the amazing opening.