Saw Super 8, an exciting but sweet kid's film. It starts with Amblin entertainment's iconic E.T.-against-the-moon logo, strongly evoking the warm-blankets-made-film that is Spielberg's work. This film is actually directed by J.J. Abrams, the guy who directed Armageddon and Cloverfield. This film has similarities with those two films in as much as this is also a sci-fi. Anyway, the film opens with a funeral. A cute little boy sits sullenly on the swingset while his motor-mouthed friends eat hors d'oeuvres and rat-a-tat-tat talk about a zombie film they're making. The industrious, cheerful messiness of the fictional suburbs makes its entrance.
The cute boy and his cute girlfriend and his cute friends are making a cute little zombie movie when a train accident occurs right next to them and unleashes a Cloverfield (or Cloverfield-alike) on the populace. This film is live-action and the creature is never fully revealed. Its movements are spider or crab-like and the juxtaposition of adorable kids solving the grand mystery of the alien with a giant, horrible spider-creature which is eating people is jarring but also interesting fun. I wish the film had stayed longer in this uncomfortable space between cuddly kids and horrible monsters.
Instead, the film falls heavily into the cuddly kids camp. Most of the movie is taken up with the kids' relationships with their parents and each other. The film is sometimes frustrating the way young-adult fiction is (ugh! Who cares about his stupid dead Mom! Get back to what the alien is doing!) but this keeps your attention, I guess. There's also liberal amounts of little gags to lighten the mood. It always made me smile when that fat kid shouted "Oh my god! Shut up!" There's even some stoner humor.
The film was pretty fun. The monster-introduction is utterly weird and bewildering. It continues to be so far into the film. It sort of feels schizophrenically like two films mashed together, like the two halves of From Dusk 'Till Dawn were interwoven. They're both interesting and entertaining films, and I think this strange marriage doesn't hurt either story. It would be interesting if they would allow the conventions of one to actually interfere with the other but this way, where they more-or-less ignore each other, is fine too. An odd and interesting movie. Not brilliant but certainly (by my generous standards) worth a look.
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