Super 8

Super 8 has been on my "to see" list for a while and I finally got around to seeing it last night. This is a movie about a group of  teenagers who make their own low budget movies with a Super 8 camera. While working on one of their productions, they witness a train crash and soon realize that an alien escaped from the train and is roaming their town. They are forced to keep a low profile from the Air Force officials who are investigating the wreck and trying to cover up the incident.

This movie takes place in the late 70's and has an authentic feel to it much like the prior movie I reviewed. I really liked the performance of the young kids who were cast in this movie. I found their teenage camaraderie to be very entertaining, but they could hardly make it through a scene without heavy swearing. I liked the story of them making movies even more than I did the actually movie. I also found it interesting that there was really only one female character with more than two lines in this movie.

This movie was directed by J.J. Abrams and has a very Spielberg-esque feel to it. It features elements of movies like Close Encounters and ET, but this alien was not as cute and doesn't like Reece's pieces. I felt that the movie paid too much homage to prior Spielberg films. There was once scene where I was totally expecting a bicycle to start flying in the moonlight.

The biggest problem I had with Super 8 was how the movie resolved itself. I felt like I had dozed off and missed a couple scenes as the final scene showed the alien leaving earth and returning home in his spaceship he had repaired with car engines and microwaves.

There are some big plot holes and some distracting inaccuracies like a pickup truck driving head on into a speeding 20 car train and demolishing it while leaving the truck only half destroyed and the driver alive. Despite hard to ignore details like this, I still enjoyed Super 8 and give it 7.2 stars.