I've Got You

Despite all the hype and anticipation, I can't help but admit that I was disappointed by JJ Abram's Super 8. Maybe nothing could have lived up to the highs of the perfectly cut teaser trailer. That trailer encompassed all the best of the Spielberg nostalgia that Abrams is trying to evoke with its suburban boys on bicycles, strained parental relationships, and John Williams score. Unfortunately, the other aspects of the film get entirely in the way of what could have been a great piece of homage to one of my favorite filmmakers.



Its been made clear from interviews with Abrams and Spielberg that, in essence, Super 8 is two movies crammed into one. I just wish that I could have enjoyed both of those movies equally, or that Abrams had found a way to better incorporate the two ideas and meld them into a satisfying whole. Instead, we get a great and emotionally resonant first act, where we meet Joe Lamb and spend time with him and his friends as they make their zombie movie. If each of the kids may be slightly one dimensional, and I could easily delineate each to a single characteristic (Cary= the pyromaniac; Charles= the filmmaker; Martin= the nervous vomiter,) their dynamic as a group is anything but. I would have been happy to just spend two hours watching these kids make their movie and deal with their every day dramas. If the movie had simply been about the love-triangle between Joe, Charles and Ali, the boys all making their movie, and the Lambs dealing with their grief all set in the nostalgia glow of Spielberg's 70s, I'm actually convinced I would have truly embraced the whole movie. As a short hand that may only make sense to me, it could have been like David Gordon Green's Snow Angels without the violence.

Instead, in trying to mash the very real world drama, with a very by the numbers monster movie, the film ultimately falls apart. While the suspenseful scenes with the monster are well shot and provide some real scares, especially the scenes at the gas station and convenience store, they mostly feel like a distraction from the movie I was previously enjoying so much.

It's odd that the monster elements of the film manage to feel so disjointed from the opening. If anything, the two stories being combined should be a natural fit in a Spielberg homage. Close Encounters expertly balanced the disintegration of a family with the alien plot, just as E.T. was able to address Elliot's feelings of abandonment and loneliness due to his parents divorce with the supernatural relationship with E.T. But, somehow, Abrams is just unable to make the pieces fit, no matter how hard he tries.

I don't want to sound like I wanted the movie to be something that it wasn't, but the film would have resonated a lot more had Abrams spent less time try to hide the monster, but instead did more to reveal its feelings or its relationship and symmetry to Joe or any of the other human characters. You can tell that with the fact that the monster can sense feelings and that final moment when he touches Joe that this is what Abrams was going for, but it hardly feels earned.


Nonetheless, somehow between the closing shot of two children and their fathers, the water tower shattering open, Giacchino's score swelling, and Joe Lamb finally letting go of his mother's locket, it did get a little dusty. I just wish I could have walked away as in awe of the entire film as I was of the opening act, and the performances of Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning.