Super 8

When I was growing up, some of my favorite movies were "The Monster Squad" and "The Goonies" movies about a group of kids who got in over their heads and end up on an awesome adventure of sheer AWESOME! "Super 8" seems to have a lot in common with those films, you always get worried when a film depends largely on the acting of a group of 9 year olds, but I will say there weren't any painful moments due to bad acting, a couple of the kids had some light overacting, but COME ON THEY'RE FUCKING 9 GET OVER IT!

Ok, so the movie starts off at a funeral, the main character, Joe Lamb, has just lost his mother in some sort of steel beam accident. It's all really tragic, a yellow camaro pulls up and a blonde haired man gets out and walks in to the house. Promptly he is escorted out of the house and in to the police car of Joe Lamb's father, who's a deputy. Joe has some friends, Charlie who's a fat kid and likes to make movies, Martin, a tall skinny kid who compulsively vomits when he's nervous or worried, Preston, who didn't have much personality and was just kinda there, and Cary a boy who loves to blow things up. Charles has recruited Joe to do make-up and special effects for his Zombie movie that he plans on entering in to a festival sometime during the summer. In order to get better story, Charles recruits Dakota Fanning's less creepy little sister to play the wife in his movie. This actually cracked me up a bit, Charles explains to Joe why it's important for the movie to have a love interest, and he says it makes the audience care more about the characters and what not. Basically JJ Abrams is telling you "Hey, I'm making this little girl the love interest for the main character, and this is why." Either way, Charles gets the kids to sneak out to film at a train station. While they're filming a car crashes in to a train and something is released. People go missing, Joe get's a little silver rubix cube that's apparently going to be significant (despite the fact that this takes place in the summer of 1979 and the Rubix cube won't be available to the American public until after 1980, but whatever) and the driver of the truck that derailed the train tells them to run away and pulls a gun on them.

Now, first let me say this. Haters gonna hate. This movie is far from flawless, but some people are making it out like it's just FULL of problems. So let me say FUCK YOU PEOPLE! This film is supposed to be an homage, had you never seen close encounters, The Goonies, ET, the Monster Squad or any movie like that this is an enjoyable little romp that you can still enjoy. If those movies were some of your favorites growing up you get a nice little tribute to your childhood. Is it Citizen Kane? NO! It's a summer popcorn film, sit back and enjoy, because as far as summer blockbusters go, this is about as good as they can get.

So I mentioned problems, they existed. There's some things that seem a little out of character for certain characters. Like there's this big crash and the loudest most boisterous character never wants to talk about it, nothing TO bad unless you're really looking. Secondly, I'm very very sick of hearing "Production Values" and "Ahh man this is MINT." The end is maybe just a little to "I'll never let go Jack" for my tastes, it's not bad, just a little to much. No matter what I say this is ALL nitpicking, so my biggest complaint is this quote from J.J. Abrams.

"it has nothing whatsoever to do with 'Cloverfield"

THEN WHY THE CRAP DOES IT SOUND EXACTLY LIKE THE CLOVERFIELD MONSTER? it also kinda looked like the Cloverfield monster! It doesn't act anything like the monster from Cloverfield but come on. There's like 30ish years between the movie it'd be cool if they did find a way to connect them. Should they? I donno if they can and it's cool, will they? I donno.

Apart from that I have no big complaints, personally I thought this movie was a lot of fun and really great. Check it out if you've got the time.