{"id":15296,"date":"2011-07-06T13:30:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T21:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15296"},"modified":"2011-07-06T15:43:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:43:52","slug":"super-8-j-j-abrams-2011-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15296","title":{"rendered":"Super 8 (J. J. Abrams, 2011): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Goleta, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 J. J. Abrams pays homage to Spielberg and the late 1970’s with \u00a0Super 8<\/a>, <\/em>a sci-fi flick involving a group of friends bent on\u00a0filming their own zombie pic.<\/p>\n

Trouble begins when this particular\u00a0group of\u00a0kids sneak out in a parent’s\u00a0jacked car, in order to\u00a0stage a scene near the railroad tracks.\u00a0 As filming begins, Joe (Joel Courtney), Alice (Elle Fanning), and the\u00a0other pre-pubescents witness a\u00a0pick-up truck in a head-on collision with a freight train,\u00a0that derails from the track.\u00a0 They manage to avoid the catastrophe but leave the camera running on the tri-pod, which eventually gets damaged\u00a0from the accident.<\/p>\n

Follow closely, because in the next scene the driver of\u00a0the pick-up truck is a teacher from their local school,\u00a0who\u00a0miraculously\u00a0survives the head-on collision save for a\u00a0few\u00a0minor cuts, and is coherent enough to mumble out a few useless clues pertaining to the cargo aboard the train.<\/p>\n

With debris covering every inch of the wreckage site, except for the path the car must take in order to escape quickly – the teens escape quickly, thus avoiding discovery by\u00a0a military clean up crew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Joe is motherless and Alice’s father is a drunk driver, and there’s an obvious\u00a0connection between the two, with\u00a0dots easily connected within the first few minutes of the film.\u00a0 Love blossoms between Joe and Alice as they sit and watch a\u00a0 super 8 film of younger Joe with his mother, in the midst of Star Wars and Space Shuttle posters, and Rock Em Sock Em Robots – takes place in the ’70’s, we get it.<\/p>\n

With a title like Super 8,\u00a0one would\u00a0expect that the film within the film would be tied in somehow, and it is but uselessly, not enough to justify the title of the film.\u00a0 It is in fact downright disappointing that the kids’ film is not incorporated more\u00a0into the plot line or the outcome.\u00a0 Periodically we are reminded of the time frame with zoom-ins on retro items such as a Walkman\u00a0playing Blondie, conveniently explained in the dialogue for the audience, which was very annoying – not sure if Abrams did this for the pre 70’s or post 70’s\u00a0audience members.<\/p>\n

There are a few strange occurrences, such as neighborhood dogs go missing, along with electronic appliances, and themes of building and repairing of models, spaceships, and ultimately relationships – but it’s all\u00a0fluff, neither solid nor deep.\u00a0 As in many a Spielberg film, we have the usual potty-mouth kids, who’s parents don’t fully appreciate them, as well as\u00a0the popular connection between alien and\u00a0kid, which\u00a0reminds us of\u00a0that\u00a0beloved summer blockbuster\u00a0film of 1982.<\/p>\n

The problem is, there’s a little bit of everything and not enough of one\u00a0thing to make a connection.\u00a0 The acting is acceptable, but the writing is convenient and lazy, with predictable dialogue.\u00a0 Case in point: \u00a0woman gives description of missing person to cop, saying “she was wearing rollers, do you know what rollers are?”\u00a0 Later that missing person appears on-screen wearing rollers, in order for us viewers to grasp the concept of rollers, or to\u00a0LOL.\u00a0 The redeeming qualities, if any,\u00a0are the diegetic and non-diegetic tunes\u00a0of Blondie and ELO – but you can download those from the internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Goleta, CA. \u00a0 J. J. Abrams pays homage to Spielberg and the late 1970’s with \u00a0Super 8, a sci-fi flick involving a group of friends bent on\u00a0filming their own zombie pic. Trouble begins when this particular\u00a0group of\u00a0kids sneak out in a parent’s\u00a0jacked car, in order to\u00a0stage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}