Super 8

Co-Produced by Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abram’s rambunctious Super 8 relives the classic summer blockbuster, but its heady Goonies nostalgia confuses cliché for pastiche 

                    Young Love: Alice (Elle Fanning) and Joe (Joel Courtney) 

Perhaps testament to his reputation for dazzling visuals and trademark ‘lens flares,’ J.J. Abrams has created a film of kaleidoscopic refraction; majestically blending spectacle and suspense, humour and poignancy, intimacy and Hollywood hyperbole. It combines Abram’s childhood memories of making movies on a Eumig super 8 camera, with a modern CGI-ridden disaster movie. It is E.T. meets Cloverfield. The nauseating chaos of overblown special effects sequences barely disguises a loving interest in childhood friendship and overcoming personal bereavement.

The film is a school’s out summer story of Joe, an isolated pre-teen whose mother has recently died and who remains numbly distanced from his straight-laced cop father. His group of friends, obsessed with making their super 8 movie, accidently witness and record a disastrous train crash. As mysterious disappearances and violent occurrences invade the town, Joe and his friends must uncover the truth. In the process, of course, he will overcome his grief, grow up and learn to reconnect with his father. Add in some Romeo and Juliet teen romance and Super 8 delivers a typical Spielbergian coming of age story circa late seventies, early eighties.

In fact it recreates it too well. Against a fun soundtrack of Chic, the Commodores and Blondie, Super 8 eagerly presents a perfect suburban topography of small town America in the early eighties. You could turn on the film at points and think you were watching The Goonies. While this kind of nostalgic pastiche speaks of simple, old-fashioned story-telling, the film rarely divulges its own voice preferring loyal replication of Spielberg aestheticism and themes.

The disaster movie aspect delivers frantic and furious explosions, fragmented by dizzying camera sweeps and switches. Such tiring scenes could easily be regurgitated from a host of recent disaster film franchises - War of the Worlds, Cloverfield, Transformers etc.

Young pretenders:  Martin, (Gabriel Basso), Cary (Ryan Lee), Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) 

Much depends on its young actors. Solid and subtle performances mean the film is a cut above most Hollywood Blockbusters. Elle fanning (sister of Dakota) emanates star quality with a natural and eye-grabbing mesmerism.

The E.T. inspired nostalgia that fuelled Abrams’ auteuristic vision, spews out a film with genuine heart. Yet what dominates is cliché, without the emotional complexity and heart-wrenching realism of Eliot’s absent father. One too many bowl cuts J.J.