All is forgiven for Lost's appalling decent into part lazy, part insane story telling, as J.J. Abrams brings us what might be the most underrated film of the year.
Super 8, set in the late 1970s, is the story of a group of friends making movies on Super 8 film (available before the days of digital recording for you young folks), in a quiet American town called Lillian. They accidentally record an incident that leads to a series of strange events and the perfect back drop for their zombie movie. I'm reluctant to share too much of the story in this review for as one critic aptly put it, “It’s one of those movies that is best consumed on an empty stomach. The less you know about it, the better... Its meant to be experienced” (Kevin Carr – 7(m)Pictures). But I can't review much with talking about the several sub-plots, that regardless of the harsh criticism, I believe, draw you into the story's believability. Without the human element, that of the lead character losing his mother and how that ties in with some of the other characters, the film would have simply been a vessel to carry a handful of explosions and some loud crashing noises. You need to care about the characters, and believe in them, for this film to work. Its risky casting a bunch of unknown kids in Hollywood nowadays, but if their good enough actors, it all worth it, at least from a artistic perspective.
And they rise to the challenge in the most wonderful way. Many who didn't like this film despised the characters, claiming that they are like every group of kids you've ever seen before. Yes there is a fat kid, but to call him the token fat kid is a little unfair seeing as unlike most 'fat kids' in Hollywood films, he's a much more rounded character (no pun intended). He is smart, driven and dominant whereas characters like 'Chunk' from the Goonies are portrayed as dumb, distracted and always eating.
All the kids do a brilliant job in this film. Joel Courtney who plays 'Joe Lamb' (the lead) has the most amazing expression filled eyes and Elle Fanning, Dakota's 13 year old sister, brings an almost adult understanding to a child's role in some of the more emotional scenes in the film. But for me, its the crazy bomb expert played by 15 year old Ryan Lee who steals the show for me, particularly in the closing scenes that roll over the credits, which were worth hanging back for. Comedy is even derived from his when he's not speaking, in the form of the adults' concern for his 'extracurricular' activities which include making cherry bombs.
Almost immediately after I started researching for this review I realised two things. The first is that the average IMDb user really didn't like this film, whereas most professional critics praised it, in some cases for the same reasons. The second realisation was probably that I was 20 years too young to be reviewing this film. Allow me to explain. 2010's big film Toy Story 3 was not made for babies born in the noughties, but for those of us that were born in the 80s who remember the original and yearn to be the little carefree kid who cheered for Woody or Buzz. I was seven year's old for most of 1995 when Toy Story came out. That's right, 1995! With similar effect, Super 8 was made for those babies of the sixties and seventies who remember making home movies on what is now 'old school' technology. And that is Super 8's most defining and important element. Most people who gave it bad reviews couldn't see it for what it was. A classic piece of nostalgia.
So, why am I bothering to review it. Well, look no further than another of 2011's critically acclaimed films for the answer; Midnight in Paris. Many in this age of post-modernism suffer from an ailment I first came across during my last year of university when studying the flow of culture through globalisation. In his essay on 'Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' Arun Appadurai tallks of 'Nostalgia without memory' . He is referring to how people from one corner of the globe can be nostalgic for a cultural legacy, not only from an entirely different part of the world, but also a completely different time in history. In the case of Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson's character, having grown up in America some 40 years later, yearns to have lived in Paris during the 1920s – calling it the greatest time to be alive. And I myself, yearn for the 1960s and 1970s. Although location is key to the nostalgia in some cases, whether it be New York, or California, or my native London, makes little difference to me provided that I found myself in the right place when music and politics fused to create the most amazing time to be young and hedonistic. Or so it seems to me. And for that reason I can appreciate Super 8 for its great appeal to nostalgia. J.J. Abrams admits to wanting to make, I guess, a love letter to his younger self and his friends who, like the group of friends in this film, wanted to make movies. I can imagine them hoping for similar scenario to have occurred in their own ordinary suburban town.
This piece almost evolved into a review of Super 8 reviews, so polarised was the reaction to this film. I think most people didn't realise what genre this film fit into and that's why many who went onto IMDb to lambaste it were so disappointed by what they were presented with in the cinema. This is not a remake of ET, or the Goonies, or a love child of the two. Nor is it in the same genre as the, quite honestly pointless, Cloverfield. Its about relationships between parents and children, between friends and its about imagination and 'Production Value'. The kids asked for production value and they certainly got it.
I could sit here and nitpick on plot holes, continuity errors, anachronisms, CGI and its similarities with other films, but hell I just enjoyed it too damn much to care. I guess I'm a sucker for a slice of nostalgia from an age before the digital era, before my time. I don't doubt this project was more personal than anything else, but it deserved to do better at the box office and it deserves to be honoured for what it was; A celebration of childhood imagination, that longs for a place in reality.
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