I saw Super 8 a few days ago and I would like to give my short review on the movie. I hope I will not give away too much of the plot, so this review will most likely only make sense to you if you already know the movie. There where several things I liked about it, but also a lot of things that could have been much better. All in all during the last half or the last third there were some missed opportunities to make this a really great movie and this is regrettable given that the first half is really good.
One thing that I liked very much beside the movie itself was the trailer (see above). The trailer uses practically no footage used in the film, or rather it uses one scene that is in the movie, but filmed from a totally different perspective. This is actually pretty clever because when you see the movie, you instantly make the connection to the trailer when the actual scene comes up. On the other hand it also is a teaser trailer aimed at an audience which will be expecting a great monster movie. Well it isn't really, so this might be misleading. I mean they tried to throw the monster movie at the audience at the end of the film but this is also the part that for me was the worst thing and made the whole movie only an average experience while it could have been great.
Best thing overall were the characters. They were well developed, had interesting stories and their own little project of making a zombie movie for a film festival with no money and at an age were they were not really taken seriously by most people. This is a really interesting set-up and the actors all do a great job so I really cared about them, their problems and their project. The whole romantic background of the suburbs in the late 70s was also very well designed and the beginning of the movie develops like a good growing up adventure movie like "The Goonies".
Then the train crash happens, where you are at once reminded of the trailer and the upcoming monster but you already have taken the perspective of the kids making their own zombie movie. So at this point the movie was really interesting because you expected that it would take the path of the monster plot but I really wanted to see the kids carry on with their project. I already cared for the characters and wanted to see more of that. Thankfully the monster plot didn't take over yet. The train crash was treated more like a little disruption of the children's project and the arrival of the army was a welcome background for their own movie scenes to heighten the "production value". That was perfect. Have a monster in a movie but don't care about it or the people dealing with it, but showing something different, showing a bunch of kids that live in their own little world on the fringes of the big adult stuff that is happening around them. This was new and exciting and I really liked that and at least for a while the movie went that path.
I have to admit that there is one thing I have to nitpick about, namely the train crash. A pickup usually wouldn't derail a freight train. In real life the pickup truck would be obliterated by the train. There might be a slight chance that it will cause the train to derail but even then it is highly unlikely that any recognizable piece of it will last, let alone that half of the pickup is still intact and the driver lives and is conscience. This has stretched the physics a bit far but I was willing to accept that weird coincidences might happen. Also, that the car the kids arrived in was parked directly next to the train station, which got blown up to smithereens, and still was up and running without a scratch, was another coincidence that I was ready to buy even if this was all stretched very far and could have been at least partially avoided (e.g. by parking the car further down the road).
Now to the things that I didn't like. After keeping the focus on the children for a while, on their project and on dealing with their own problems while the adults are dealing with the monster plot the movie suddenly takes a turn. Almost out of nowhere the children start breaking into the school, finding out about the alien, finding the alien hiding place, making contact and escaping the monster, which itself understands that the children are the nice guys and which only wants to go home. All the scenes from that sudden plot turn were forced and destroyed any kind of credibility. It was almost like a cynical comment of Abrahams and Spielberg to give the audience a good interesting movie and then right in the middle tell them "fuck you! We can make a Cloverfield meets E.T. movie anytime we want, bitch!" Nothing of the monster plot was interesting, new or remotely credible. Not even the special effects were outstanding so why go that way at all? Why ruin a really good set-up for such a weak pay off that has nothing to do with the first part of the film?
Maybe it was because they feared that after the trailer, the audience would expect a classic monster movie and would feel betrayed if they don't get it, but as it turned out it was a half-assed attempt in either direction, so why not risk it and make something new. I really regret that they didn't go with the plot of the first half. It would have been possible, since the children had practically no impact on the outcome of the monster plot anyway. the alien just built its ship and left. So nothing much had to be changed.
In the end credits they come back to the original setup and show the movie the children made for the festival. So basically this means that the characters really cared about their project. Not even a monster from outer space could change that. It is sad, that this original idea only finds its place in the end credits. It would have been a nice ending in itself to have them show their finished film at the festival and to let the whole monster plot completely on the sideline of the movie.
So for this half-good-half-bad-movie I give it 3 out of 5 Stars.
