Monday, June 20, 2011

SUPER 8

“SUPER 8” (Joel Courtney & Elle Fanning)

When the trailers prior to the feature presentation are all silly, stupid or just plain uninteresting, that usually means what I’m about to see is going to be silly, stupid or just plain uninteresting. ‘Super 8’ didn’t follow that criterion. Realizing it was a kids’ movie along the lines of ‘E.T.’, but with a scary alien, ‘Super 8’ far exceeded expectations.
Besides, ‘E.T.’, I also thought of ‘Alien’ & ’Australia’... ‘Australia’??? I’ll explain later.
But the obvious comparison is to ‘E.T.’ one of the most beloved movies of all time by the American masses... of which I am not a member. ‘E.T.’ was a cute little kid’s film, but it was nothing special to me. It was childish, poorly acted and phony. ‘Super 8’ has a more adult theme to it despite being dominated by child actors, the acting is decent – in the case of the two leads, outstanding, and it is realistic; the U.S. military (the Air Force in this case) is the villain – the creature is simply an added, unseen terror. The heart of ‘E.T.’ was the ‘aw, schucks’ simplistic story of a boy’s friendship with a muppet from outer space; ‘Super 8’ is the story of 2 kids developing a friendship with one another because their fathers lack the ability to relate to them.
The comparison to ‘Alien’ is that the creature isn’t cute & cuddly – it’s a monster, but you don’t even get a glimpse of it until late in the film & then see the whole thing, up close & terrifying, at the end. I throw in ‘Australia’ because like that film, ‘Super 8’ had to win me back after stumbling out of the starting gate. I hated the first 30 minutes of ‘Australia’, but then it improved. What I disliked about ‘Super 8’ was the implausible ‘accident’ that sets the whole story in motion – a truck speeds onto a train track & collides with an oncoming locomotive head on. I’ve actually seen something like this happen & in every train vs. truck match-up – the train wins. But not here. The truck is cut in half. The collision was head on, but somehow only half of the truck is obliterated? Not only does the driver survive the crash & subsequent explosions, so does his map of the trains’ itinerary – it isn’t even crumpled or singed... I just found that to be somewhat ridiculous and I was disappointed because the movie had a really nice opening.
Joey (Joel Courtney) is seen sitting on a swing while adults gather inside his house following his mother’s funeral. A man (Men Behaving Badly’s Ron Eldard) comes to pay his respects & is brutally thrown out of the house by Joey’s grieving father (Kyle Chandler, yet another TV actor, but at least he’s had a job in this century)
Later, Dad – a deputy on the local police force – tells Joey he’s sending him to a 6 week fantasy baseball camp for the summer. Joey doesn’t want to go & feels as though his father is abandoning him, virtually making him an orphan.
Joe’s excuse is that he has to help his friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) finish his movie. 'Super 8' is set in the late 70’s, the amateur ‘zombie’ movie is being shot with a camera that uses ‘Super 8’ film – the kind that has to be sent away for three days to be developed. So by the time the footage returns and a glimpse of the creature is finally seen, the small town of Lillian has already been over-run by the military and every dog in town has thumbed a ride to anywhere but there. Which leads to my next curious moment – why didn’t the horses and goats run away as well? Because they’re used to being food?
Noah Emmerick plays the military meanie that herds people like cattle and imprisons anyone that questions what he’s doing and why he’s doing it (Like Joey’s dad) Emmerick was excellent as the bad cop in ‘Little Children’, but here, he plays a ‘seen that same character dozens of times before’ role, so he isn’t very impressive.
‘Super 8’ is elevated by the appearance of Alice (Elle Fanning) the cute girl in school that Joey (& every boy in class) has a secret crush on. When Alice sees the son of a cop, she sneers at him; “I’m not doing this with him around!”
Alice has agreed to be in Charles’ movie, but balks after she’s ‘borrowed’ her dad’s car & is driving without a license. Joey assures her that he won’t tell his dad and although she agrees, the look on her face says, ‘OK, but stay AWAY from me!’
It’s that growing into puppy love relationship between Joey and Alice that makes this film special because the actors are two of the best for their age that I’ve ever seen. Though her sister Dakota was much younger when she came into prominence, Elle proves in ‘Super 8’ that she can definitely act. In fact, if I have one complaint about her it’s that she’s TOO good. During one scene Joey has to act in a scene from the zombie movie and he’s terrible; Alice is impressive right from the start – but then again, why would Alice want to be in these geeky guys’ movie if she didn’t think she had acting chops?
The other kid actors pale in comparison to Joel & Elle, but they’re ‘ok’. The most amazing casting however is Cary; a kid who is obsessed with fireworks and blowing things up – somehow they cloned Tanner Boyle from the original ‘Bad News Bears’ and brought him back to life!
So ‘Super 8’ is the kid’s movie made for adults – if you have little ones that have seen ‘E.T.’ a hundred times on DVD & want to go see the latest cute ‘n’ cuddly alien movie –this isn’t it. I think pre-teen kids will be bored by this film - They’ll think the implausible train vs truck crash & explosions are gnarly, but after that, they’ll get restless because then it becomes a mystery & when the alien is finally brought to the forefront, it is far from being cute’n’cuddly and instead of Reese’s pieces, it eats people (because the dogs had the good sense to hightail it out of town!)
Since I grew up with a father that I never connected with, that I felt didn’t want me around either, I related to Joey’s predicament. That’s what pulled me into this story – why I cared about the kid and needed that happy ending – because I never got it. Perhaps ‘Super 8’ is just special to me – maybe the masses will love it because the monster at the end is real gnarly. By the way, what word do kids use today instead of ‘gnarly’?
Dudley Moore, after peaking with 'Arthur' made a whole lot of stinkers, but one had the memorable line, "Do you know why Hollywood has such a difficult time finding good actresses for female characters? Because you have to hire women to play them." I always felt that way about 'child' actors - that they can ruin an otherwise good flick. In 'Super 8', it's the kid actors that are the reason to go see this film. Did Joel Courtney & Elle Fanning just happen to find roles that fit them perfectly, or do they have impressive acting careers on the horizon? I'll be watching them both in the future and I hope they continue to work at their craft because they are off to an incredible start. Excellent job, kids, excellent.

1 comment:

dbm said...

I liked it. It does have a ET feel to it, but that's about it. I never lost interest during the movie. Elle Fanning might just end up being better than her sister. She was very good in Somewhere last year.