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lillibetJason and I saw Super 8 tonight.
There was a lot about it that I really liked and a few great bits, but in the end it failed to make the jump to "great".
Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning both turned in great performances as the young leads. I thought the other kids did well with fairly cardboard characters, although Riley Griffiths couldn't quite get the emotional vulnerability he needed for a key scene. The grown-ups were notably B-grade--not bad, just steadily average, which may have been a deliberate choice to set off the kids and make them the clear focus.
The story was reasonably good, but failed on three points. Most importantly, I was disappointed at the treatment of Fanning's character. She was a well-written, nuanced version of 'the girl' but this is a story about the boys in which she is the object rather than an independent agent. There was a clear opportunity for her to step up and become more central to the outcome, but instead she gets to play damsel in distress and an unconscious one, to boot. Secondly, it's a long movie and it seemed clear that some important moments of family relationships were cut in favor of moving things along. As a parent, the idea that I would leave my town during an evacuation and simply trust that all my kids would make it on their own seems ludicrous to me. Less troublesome, but more central to the overall quality of the film, there were no twists. This is a paean to movies of the 1980s, an ET for our time. Those were good tropes, but they've been done and I expected more surprise and creativity from J.J. Abrams. The score, in particular, was used completely unironically and with such a heavy hand that I thought more than once "stop telling me how to feel and make me feel it!"
It was eerie to see 1980 recreated so faithfully. I was eleven in 1980, rather than 14 like the main characters here, but I recognized those houses, those cars, that music. When the town meeting decides that the town's troubles must be a Soviet attack, the whole audience laughed--but of course they thought that. That's what we would have thought.
Several critics have found fault with the length of the special effects set pieces. This is often a problem for me in movies--cut past the chase, please!--but I wasn't troubled by it here. The effects are beautiful and presented with such obvious joy and enthusiasm by the filmmakers that it's easy to simply relax and enjoy the aesthetics of the moment.
Super 8 wasn't quite the movie for me. I can understand why many people love it, but to me it felt like a hodge-podge of homage to the greats, rather than going for great in its own right. But it's by no means a bad way to spend a Friday night and perhaps a preview of better things to come from many of those involved.
There was a lot about it that I really liked and a few great bits, but in the end it failed to make the jump to "great".
Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning both turned in great performances as the young leads. I thought the other kids did well with fairly cardboard characters, although Riley Griffiths couldn't quite get the emotional vulnerability he needed for a key scene. The grown-ups were notably B-grade--not bad, just steadily average, which may have been a deliberate choice to set off the kids and make them the clear focus.
The story was reasonably good, but failed on three points. Most importantly, I was disappointed at the treatment of Fanning's character. She was a well-written, nuanced version of 'the girl' but this is a story about the boys in which she is the object rather than an independent agent. There was a clear opportunity for her to step up and become more central to the outcome, but instead she gets to play damsel in distress and an unconscious one, to boot. Secondly, it's a long movie and it seemed clear that some important moments of family relationships were cut in favor of moving things along. As a parent, the idea that I would leave my town during an evacuation and simply trust that all my kids would make it on their own seems ludicrous to me. Less troublesome, but more central to the overall quality of the film, there were no twists. This is a paean to movies of the 1980s, an ET for our time. Those were good tropes, but they've been done and I expected more surprise and creativity from J.J. Abrams. The score, in particular, was used completely unironically and with such a heavy hand that I thought more than once "stop telling me how to feel and make me feel it!"
It was eerie to see 1980 recreated so faithfully. I was eleven in 1980, rather than 14 like the main characters here, but I recognized those houses, those cars, that music. When the town meeting decides that the town's troubles must be a Soviet attack, the whole audience laughed--but of course they thought that. That's what we would have thought.
Several critics have found fault with the length of the special effects set pieces. This is often a problem for me in movies--cut past the chase, please!--but I wasn't troubled by it here. The effects are beautiful and presented with such obvious joy and enthusiasm by the filmmakers that it's easy to simply relax and enjoy the aesthetics of the moment.
Super 8 wasn't quite the movie for me. I can understand why many people love it, but to me it felt like a hodge-podge of homage to the greats, rather than going for great in its own right. But it's by no means a bad way to spend a Friday night and perhaps a preview of better things to come from many of those involved.
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Date: 2011-07-02 01:24 pm (UTC)Which brings up an interesting point: Letting the alien go might not have been a good idea; it probably has friends and they are going to be very annoyed once they all find out what happened. Maybe that's where the transformers came from.
And yes, Fanning's role was far too small as the damsel in distress. Waif waif. But the train crash was impressive, it was as if the same film-maker who blew a train model up with a firecracker was given 50 million dollars....
JJ seems to be good with suspense but not so good with storytelling. Such is life.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-02 02:02 pm (UTC)Based on the interviews I've read, that's exactly what happened.
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Date: 2011-07-05 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-05 04:36 pm (UTC)One of the movies this was clearly paying homage to was Stand By Me, a few years later, as the gang is beginning to pay attention to girls. And it did a better job than many with the "girls ruin everything" trope--Alice was ruining everything, but she was also making it better and richer than the boys could achieve on their own. But playing on the "But I never had friends like the ones I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" meme was one of the ways that it felt much more like a boys' movie than one for everyone, even with Alice at the table. She's not part of the gang, she's the girl.
I wonder if that's changing at all, as so many other things about youth are. I should ask some younger folk.