ViewGuide

Created Jun 12, 2011 06:54PM PST • Edited Jul 25, 2012 08:59PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Spielbergian indeed — middle school kids running their own show, parents stricken with tragedy, lots of bike riding, police cruisers and one big honking Air Force train in one hell of a crash.

   Cincinnati, we’ve got a problem.

   And America’s got a really great summer blockbuster. Set in mid-America, full of American archetypes, like That 70s SciFi Show amped up to Spielbergian levels, Super 8 is super indeed. Maybe even Super eight: Male and Female acting, perfect direction, great screenplay, perfect music and perfect visuals. Given that there are four acting categories, that scores Super 8 at least great eight times. Super. Eight.

   33% LOL, which isn’t absolutely necessary, yet so much more fun. Given all the stuff that gets blown up and otherwise destroyed by a big honking train crash, there’s still plenty of room for surreal humor, which J.J. Abrams and his super cast regularly find.

   Hail writer-director Abrams, producer Steven Spielberg, star Kyle Chandler and the kids in the cast. Super 8’s one for the ages.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Super 8 hatches several surefire stars.

   • Elle Fanning, welcome to moviestardom. Hollywood rarely sees breakout performances like yours.
   • Joel Courtney proves sweet and stout as Joe Lamb, best boy. How new is young Courtney? Super 8 is the sole entry in his IMDb Filmography. That’s gonna change.
   • Kyle Chandler quietly impresses as his upright yet remote Dad, Deputy Jack Lamb. Chandler – one of the best TV stars ever – walks the moviestar walk here, talks the moviestar talk, personifying Full Hearts, Clear Eyes, Can’t Lose.

   Nearly as impressive are half a dozen others.

   • Riley Griffiths as an aspiring Hitchcock, or is that a future Romero? Actually, probably a Spielberg wannabe, though that goes unsaid.
   • Ryan Lee as a young pyro.
   • Ron Eldard as a mean drunk and sad excuse for a Father. This pug of an actor’s come a long way from his good guy paramedic on ER.
   • Amanda Michalka as a smokin’ 16 year-old. The WikChip has proof. Her come-on to the town stoner is a classic.
   • Noah Emmerich as an insufferably smug Colonel. Boo. Hiss.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Starts perfectly, maintains a perfect pace through the first reel, and while not maintaining it for the entire movie, achieves it again and again in the second and third reels. Awesome.

    As in all thrillers, people inspect creepy stuff in cemeteries, lift themselves higher on a boom when something powerful is raising holy hell nearby, and decide to go down a seriously scary cave that just appeared in the middle of town. IOW, their movie thrill reactions are the opposite of Darwinian reactions. Good thing, that.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    Teens with their own universe, cool.

    Supernatural hyper-reality makes suspension-of-disbelief hard to suspend after a while.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.0

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.4

    Unnoticed – like wallpaper – in a movie like this is that the government, the US Air Force in this case, is craven and totally out of control.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.5

    Disaster in Lillian, OH, days on end: no one comes in even from Cincinnati? Sure.

    BTW, do a search on Lillian, OH. Kinda weird what comes up — Zillow’s got a house there with a Zestimate® of $98,500. Really? A Zestimate of a house in a town that doesn’t exist. Does that say more about Zillow or more about Abrams and Spielberg?

23. Biological Supernatural 3.9

24. Physical Supernatural 3.9