Super 8: J. J. Abrams

When you get right down to it, Super 8 is what would have happened if late 70s, early 80s Spielberg had ever been given a modern day movie budget.  This is both good and bad.  The good is that it stars a cast of ordinary, likeable protagonists flung into circumstances beyond their control.  Abrams remembers something that many film-makers have forgotten: for an audience to care about a film, they have to care about the characters.  Also, For about 2/3 of the film, Abrams makes glorious use of the old trick of not actually showing the monster.  But this leads into the bad things about this film.  When the monster does appear, it is so outlandish, and so obviously a computer image that there is no way that we can take it seriously.  We cared about E.T. because he was actually THERE with Elliot.  We were awed by the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Time because there were actors on screen in costumes.  The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park looked real because...well...they WERE real...most of the time.  Abrams is still addicted to using large scale, computer aided effects a la Star Trek when Super 8  demanded a more intimate, lower budget approach.  Maybe practical effects are too much to ask for in this day and age.  But I've noticed that the bigger the effects, no matter how well they are done, the less we believe in the actual story.  This is deadly to a film like Super 8 which takes such great pains to keep things on a smaller, more human scale.  Also, too many of the really good effects were obviously computer generated.  The train crash, as well shot as it was, felt artificial.  I'm sorry...but hasn't Hollywood taken every opportunity since the days of Buster Keaton to wreck real trains for such scenes?  Perhaps I'm asking too much.  For all its CGI-assisted effects and plot holes (what ever happened to those dogs, anyway), Super 8 remains one of the best summer movies to come down the pipe in a long time.

7/10