Film Review: Super 8 (2011)

31Oct11

Just watched the movie Super 8 and I have to say I am a bit underwhelmed. It starts out fine with a nice retro nostalgia set in a small American town in 1979. A bunch of kids are making a movie and manage to persuade the pretty and cool girl Alice (Elle Fanning) to be in it. Then they become witnesses to a strange train accidents with mysterious and dangerous consequences. All set for an interesting movie.

Unfortunately it’s all down hill from there. The fundamental error lies in the conflicts. A good story is all about introducing and resolving conflicts in an interesting way. And there are a lot of conflicts – between the protagonist Joe’s (Joel Courtney) and his dad, between Alice and her dad, between the dads and between Joe and his rival Charles (Riley Griffiths). But how are these conflicts resolved? By introducing a monster and a lot of special effects and then just pretend that this bigger external threat resolves everything. In other words: the conflicts are not resolved at all. Or, in one case, it’s on a “I’m sorry”, “Ok then”-form.

So the lack of story is a problem but the characters are also vague and uninteresting. The only original feature in them is that there are three male characters who are all depicted as flawed in some way – one is a depressed alcoholic, one pothead and the third is constantly blowing stuff up or starting fires – and they all have long blond hair. Seriously, what is up with that?

The only reason I will remember this film a year from now (besides the blond-men-are-inferior theme) is Elle Fanning who shows great acting skills. I will definitely look out for more stuff from her, but hardly from director JJ Abrams, producer Steven Spielberg or any other of the actors.

IMDB rates it 7.4 which is crazy. I would put it at 5.5, and only because of Fanning.