Macgirl Media Pick of the Week: Super 8 is Super Flashback

I am as pro-Steven Spielberg as you can get...a child of the 80's, I loved ET, Indiana Jones, the Goonies, and everything else Spielberg put his name to. Fast forward to adulthood, and there's JJ Abrams with Felicity, LOST, and Star Trek...more media for me to love. When I heard about Super 8, I was super-excited: a JJ Abrams movie with overtures of the Spielberg classics (Spielberg produced the film), with a plot point revolving around film - ah, good old Super 8 film! So I ran to the theater, with excitement, but also a determination to take it all with a grain of salt. This turned out to be good advice for myself.

Super 8 starts promisingly enough, with a pan shot through a steel mill, with a worker changing the count on the "day since last accident" board - to one. Reasonably subtle sign to the audience that a tragedy just occured. This is the last sign of subtly we'll enjoy in the this movie. I was still hopeful a few more minutes in, until "the train crash scene" (this is the only hint of a spoiler in this review- and it's not much of a spoiler). Oh my, the train crash scene. Where to start? The complete lack of any concern for the laws of physics pained me beyond anything Michael Bay has released, mainly because I had expectations of a simpler, well written, fun movie, not a blow-everything up (even if you already aired it in another of your feature films) Michael Bay production. So, when one train car flew 100 yards into, and through, the train station, all without leaving a scratch on any of the group of kids, I pretty much checked out. The movie jumped the sharp inside of 10 minutes. How disappointing. But, as I said earlier, I told myself to take it with a grain of salt. So I re-engaged, and found I enjoyed parts of the movie. The acting was good, and the main characters were all likeable without being too perfect. But the moments of shark-jumping continued, and the dialogue at the end was so painful, so obvious and forced, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. One other observation (and another potential spoiler): the "bad guy" (aka misunderstood alien) had the same look that all of JJ's "bad guys" have- not that it's easy to create an alien creature from scratch, but I've seen this guy before! I'm not surprised at the reveal!

Final review- nice summer flick, some good acting, some fun Spielberg-inspired action, and some ridiculous moments where you will be jettisoned from the movie and need time to get back into enjoying the flow. 3 stars out of 5 on the macgirl meter!