“Production Values!” EW’s Lisa Schwatzbaum says Super 8 is “a great specimen of original storytelling grounded in a sophisticated respect for storytellers who have come before.”
Loving, Playful, and spectacularly well made, Super 8 is easily the best summer movie of the year — of many years. And I make that declaration with full knowledge that the season has just begun. It’s been eons since a movie has conjured up such intense, specific feelings, images, memories, and nostalgic fantasies about American summertime youth — everyone’s American summertime youth, regardless of current age, nationality, sex, or climate. It’s been ages since adolescent innocence, fatherly authority, and everyday awe were in movie vogue. This irresistible story of middle-school-age kids who set out to make a zombie flick, accidentally witness a sensational train crash, and become involved in a tale of extraterrestrial mystery straight out of an E.T.-era Steven Spielberg pic may leave viewers dumbstruck: How have we survived for so long on such a meager, high-cal, low-nutrition diet of processed summertime superhero sequels?
Typical of such outstanding Abrams productions as Star Trek, Cloverfield, and TV’s addictive megamystery Lost, Super 8 wears its humor and knowledge lightly, both in screenplay and in production values. There is as much time available, in this lovely summer movie, for a convenience-store dude to marvel at the invention of the Walkman (a personal stereo system!); for a couple of boy buddies to fight over a girl; for various bodies to be snatched in the best monster-movie tradition; and for townsfolk to gather, united in wonder at something astonishing happening in the sky. As a result, we gather in wonder too, aloft with pleasure.
