Super 8, in this reviewers opinion, is a good film but a bit of a slowing of the JJ Abrams golden touch. This homage to the classic Steven Spielberg films of the 1980s feels less like a tribute than a carbon copy......same basic thing, just messier and harder to visualize.
Plotline is this: In 1979, a group of friends (Courtney, Fanning, Griffiths and others) are working on a film to be entered into a contest. This project leads them to a train station one night as a USAF train zips by, and as they shoot their Super 8 masterpiece, a truck derails the train and leads the kids into a bizarre situation involving government secrets and family dynamics.
Everyone does very well with their roles. Im very partial to the job Ms. Fanning does here, leading her young co-stars and giving a bit of life to a character that could have been very one dimensional. However, as good as the kids (and adults for that matter) create their roles, it all seems like mere caricatures of roles from those same Spielberg films.
JJ Abrams has been gold at the box office recently, and I think that Super 8 needed a bit more tuning before release, even if it meant working on Star Trek 2 first.
B+
