Super 8: This film is all about nostalgia

Written by Jonathan Schumann, a Reel Son
Thursday, 23 June 2011 10:52

Each week, the Reel Dad checks the nutritional value of a movie — new or classic — to help parents choose what to watch. This week, his son Jonathan — who shared his movie views in this column for several years — returns with a look at the new film, Super 8.

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Famed Vogue editrix and fashion maven Diane Vreeland famously said, “I loathe nostalgia.”

For cineastes, it’s a different story. I don’t know a single movie lover who doesn’t recall their early days of movie going without a wistful glow and twinkle in their eye. Coming of age when I did, this meant the glory days of the Steven Spielberg and George Lucas era. While I may have been too young to catch the Indiana Jones and Star Wars films in the theater, the nascent age of home entertainment made them readily available and instantly re-watchable.

It’s funny to think that my first movie memory involved Ewoks. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor of our family room in Houston, Texas, and reveling in Return of the Jedi. That’s, of course, before I had the good taste to dismiss these Ewoks as McDonald’s happy meal toys waiting to happen and Jabba the Hutt as an utterly repellent, unconvincing movie monster. Nevertheless, the glee and wonderment that viewing experience stirred in me created the movie lover I am today.

Super 8, the new film from J.J. Abrams, is all about nostalgia. He artfully conjures the glory days of 80s blockbuster cinema — think Temple of Doom, The Goonies — and in doing so reminds us why we all go back to darkened auditoriums as often as we do.

The film follows a ragtag group of young would-be filmmakers as they spend the summer making a zombie film on the cheap. Their dewey-eyed optimism and sense of possibility would normally turn off a cynic like me, but Abrams captures it with impressive authenticity, thanks in no small part to a convincing, unpretentious group of child actors. As the object of adolescent fanboy idolatry, Elle Fanning, so appealing in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, continues her streak of conveying emotion and wariness far beyond her years.

Of course, if this were just a movie about kids making movies, it would not be a summer release. While filming one night, the gang witnesses a spectacularly filmed train wreck (yes, it rivals the famous sequence from The Fugitive) that unleashes a monster who soon wreaks havoc on their small town.

Abrams wisely sticks to Spielberg’s Jaws blueprint and reveals the monster slowly, and waits until the third act to show it off in its entirety. It’s a good thing, because we’ve seen this digital piece-of-work before — it feels like shades of the creatures from Cloverfield, Starship Troopers, and District 9 patched together as if by committee.

For the typical monster movie, that would be problematic, but because Super 8 is about so much more (youthful loss of innocence, primarily), Abrams gets a pass.

Video Pick

Inspired by Super 8 to rent a movie? Here’s a suggestion from The Reel Son:

The Goonies. The ebullient, motor-mouthed child ensemble that makes Super 8 so winning recalls the one that appears in Richard Donner’s The Goonies, a delightful and, now, totally nostalgic adventure film from the 80s. A group of friends searches for buried treasure in the Pacific Northwest. Simple story, brilliant execution.

Super 8, rated PG-13, runs 112 minutes.

4 Popcorn Buckets