Review: Super 8

Abrams and Spielberg team up to bring an adventure about scary monsters and precocious tweens. You can guess who brought what.

For those too young to remember, before comic book movies and other geek culture dominated summer release schedules a blockbuster’s pedigree was based largely on its stars and sometimes also the director and producers involved. For about fifteen years or so, roughly between 1982′s E.T. and 1997′s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s name on a project was pretty much a license to print cash. Long on adventure and what a less jaded era called “wonder” but also cynically sentimental and patronizing towards the “magic” of youthful exuberance, Spielberg’s directorial work – E.T., the first Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade – routinely provided an idealized vision of childhood for the latchkey generation.

So it’s probably no wonder that Super 8 takes place in early summer 1979, a period that’s come to symbolize an age of low-tech innocence in much the same way that the 1950s did for the 1980′s. Spielberg as producer is well matched with J.J. Abrams, a writer/director who doesn’t mind suspending spectacle for the sake of character development. But their collaboration is less a union of strengths so much as a blending of weaknesses, making the finished film an uneven, prolonged struggle with itself. To call it a bad film is perhaps besides the point, because it never really aspires to anything besides diversionary entertainment. Except it often fails to provide that.

Set in the Springsteenesque town of Lillian, Ohio, the story focuses on tween Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler), struggling with the death of Joe’s mother at the local steel mill. The two are not close, but with the beginning of summer Joe finds a creative outlet for his grief helping overbearing buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) complete his homemade zombie film for a local film competition. Complications arise when Charles casts local dream girl Alice (Elle Fanning) in a crucial role. Alice’s alcoholic father, it seems, is indirectly responsible for the death of Joe’s mother. Joe and Alice are fascinated by one another through guilt and grief, and their friendship – forbidden by Joe’s dad as well as Alice’s (Ron Eldard) – coalesces into the bulk of the film’s emotional substance.

Courtney and Fanning are both very good actors, and backed by old pros like Chandler and Eldard it’s almost a shame that the film won’t be an engaging character piece about these simple, sympathetic victims. Yet, despite, and nevertheless, the filming of Charles’ 8-millimeter saga captures a spectacular freight train-truck collision that frees something the Air Force was transporting across country; stranger still, the truck was driven into the train on purpose by their science teacher (Glynn Turman). In short order a series of strange events plague the town – machinery disappears, all the dogs head for the hinterlands, people start vanishing. The Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) obviously knows something but won’t share information with local officials. When the mysterious presence grabs the town’s sheriff, Joe’s father tries to hold things together while solving the mystery.

The strange events increase, growing more violent and more dependant on special effects. Joe and the gang realize, thanks to purloined evidence from the teacher’s storage locker, that the creature they see only dimly in the footage from their wrecked camera is the prisoner of the military, an alien crash-landed on Earth in the 1950s and held prisoner ever since. As the Air Force evacuates the town and steps up its attempts to recapture the alien, Joe embarks on a mission to save Alice from its subterranean lair.

The resolutions to both stories will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Spielberg’s films and their legions of reruns on cable. Joe’s empathy allows him to reach an entente with the monstrous alien, saving Alice’s life even while the arrogance of the adults around them cements their downfall. The kids’ fathers reconcile their differences in short order (too short, really, given their source) and the alien gets to go home thanks to a spaceship cobbled together from all those stolen appliances.

The film’s getting a lot of press about Abrams paying “homage” to Spielberg’s 80s work, but the combined effect doesn’t feel so much like tribute as parenthetical citation. A nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind here, an oblique reference to Jaws there, and of course a tureen full of The Goonies (of which Spielberg was Executive Producer, possibly a nebulous title except the film bears so many of his hallmarks). Yet all the little details don’t serve to move the story or the characters forward but instead hang from it like tinsel. Scenes drag on or fall short before reaching their payoff, and often hammy acting by the kids only compounds the problem.

The first act, past the lovely prologue involving the funeral of Joe’s mother, goes on much longer than it should, and falls short of establishing the children’s’ personalities before the creature is set loose. The second act, by comparison, contains most of the suspense but often feels disorganized and uncertain of its priorities. For as much as Abrams is willing to pause action to let his characters breathe – and he does in a heartbreaking sequence involving Alice and Joe watching home movies of Joe’s mother – the action when it happens fails to engage on anything but the most superficial level. He also relies on too many tropes he’s used before: the contraband film strip, the underground bunkers, the renegade scientists all recall Lost too much by half, and not in a way that invites favorable comparison.

For as good as Courtney and Fanning are, less so are Riley Griffiths and Ryan Lee as Charles the filmmaker and Cary the pyromaniac. But their characters are little more than stock types, meant to occupy space and provide comic relief, as are Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills as the gang’s third string. Emmerich is a sublime character actor who deserves better roles than Nelec, a villain who would twirl his mustache if he had one.

The ending is about what you ‘d expect, sentimental and superficially brave without excpecting any real emotional engagement from the audience. Spielberg’s films, after all, always made sure their stories ended tidily for everyone, character and viewer alike. Actually, this time the audience can stick around to see Charles’ completed zombie saga in all its goofy, patchwork glory. At several minutes in length it’s a nice after-dinner mint for the rest of the film, even if it’s maybe not as charming as Abrams and Spielberg think.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Paul

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s close encounter comedy revives the comic adventures of the 1980s.

Geek culture has entered the American mainstream, not from any cultural impetus or because the film and television industries realized the tremendous storytelling potential of its legions of franchises. Rather, money – the fortunes to be made in celebrating and exploiting what was once an outlying, fringe element of society – is too good to pass up. Too, it helps that some of the best comedic minds around right now proudly wave their geek cred.

That crossover continues in glorious scale, and in fact probably makes its grand arrival, with the very funny satire/homage Paul, the funniest American film since last year’s The Other Guys and a career high for several of its creative forces. Not for the faint of sensibilities and especially not for anyone humorless about their purpose driven life, it’s nevertheless bawdy, smart fun for the rest of us.

After years of anticipation, lifelong British geeks and (to quote geek tycoon Kevin Smith) hetero life-mates Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) embark on a trip across America, beginning with a visit to the San Diego Comic-Con and continuing with a sojourn to the sites of reported extraterrestrial contact throughout the American Southwest. The two are pleasantly astonished by American excess, drinking in the oddities of the alien-themed tourist traps but mostly remaining at a safe distance within their rented RV. Clive, though, is restive after a convention meeting with their favorite science fiction author (Jeffrey Tambor) proves underwhelming.

Driving along a desolate highway at night and fleeing two bullying rednecks (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), the two witness a black sedan fly crashing off the road. Investigating the wreck, they encounter the ET code-named Paul (voiced by Set Rogen) by his government caretakers. Paul had crashed to Earth decades before, and since then has covertly advised the U.S. military and the American entertainment industry. Now with his knowledge all but exhausted by his top-secret hosts, Paul fears vivisection at the hands of the shadowy “Big Guy” controlling his concealment. He begs for Graeme and Clive’s help in reaching an unspecified destination – “You’ll know it when you see it, guys,” he tells them - before government Agent Zoil (Jason Bateman) catches up to him.

At times evoking memories of comic book icon and movie disaster Howard The Duck, Paul is no one’s idea of an enlightened being. Quick to curse and nursing a love for cigarettes, pot, and easy living, he’s nonetheless privy to cosmic secrets that leave mere humans scratching their heads. Able to camouflage himself to his surroundings and to heal minor energies through energy transference, he’s also a stronger personality than his human cohorts, more assured by way of being confident of his place in the universe.

Stopping overnight at the Pearly Gates trailer ranch, the trio picks up an unintentional hostage in Ruth (Kristen Wiig), a creationist and devout Christian immediately at odds with Paul’s very existence. When Paul heals an eye that was damaged during childhood, she resolves to live the most debauched life she can, arguing if there’s no such thing as sin then her behavoir can’t be wrong. “I plan to fornicate a lot!” she tells a smitten Graeme.

The group inches towards their destination while eluding Zoil, Ruth’s bible-thumping father (John Carroll Lynch) and two junior agents (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) looking to prove themselves to the Big Guy. A detour to the site of Paul’s arrival on Earth gains them another passenger, the woman (Blythe Danner) who as a girl saved him from the wreckage of the UFO. Paul regrets her involvement, and the social ostracism it caused, and wants to make amends before leaving.

Ultimately the group reaches the site of the alien rendezvous, escaping the agent’s clutches and facing down the Big Guy in a series of surprising twists. (The villain’s identity is meant to be a surprise, so I won’t spoil it here.) A neat epilogue brings the story back around to the Comic-Con, where Clive and Graeme revel in the success Paul’s inspiration has brought them.

Written by Pegg and Frost, the script under the direction of Greg Mottola plays as a more well-rounded and mature effort than the duo’s previous Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, and another accomplishment for Mottola following 2009′s deeply underrated Adventureland. Their American costars – Rogen, Wiig, Heder, Bateman – understand the deadpan glee the two bring to their stories, and adjust their performances accordingly. Wiig, probably comedy’s next great leading woman, is alternately melancholy and explosive as the newly- and happily-unsheltered Ruth; Bateman, an odd choice to play a heavy, twists Michael Bluth’s legendary sarcasm to a new pungency. Hader and Lo Truglio perform the least, though their parts are written barely above the level of stock characters.

Only once does the film seem to lose its comic footing, during an excessively violent chase sequence that sees two characters blown up and another shot in cold blood. Though Pegg and Frost have said the film is an homage to Steven Spielberg (the script is loaded with references to his 1980s films, and even includes a brief but oddly tepid phone conversation between Paul and Spielberg as himself), the influence of other comedy adventures from the decade stays readily apparent. In its occasionally unwieldy fusion of snarky comedy and special effects-driven adventure the film sometimes resembles, probably deliberately, 80s classics including Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us, and Neighbors. (We can easily imagine a 1985 version starring John Candy and Dan Ackroyd as the geeks, with Bill Murray as the voice of Paul.)

Though it’s not necessary, and indeed may only have bogged things down, for as intelligent as the film can sometimes become the absence of explanation or discussion of geek culture – its sources and enduring resistance to mainstream ridicule as well as the passage of time – remains an odd emptiness at the center of Graeme and Clive’s characters. They’re, at heart, intelligent and intrepid men, and their fascination with three-breasted alien women and samurai swords seems at cross-purposes to their capacity for daring. It’s suggested, vaguely, that a life of sci-fi fascination gave them such strengths, but only barely and not enough to resonate through the entire film. 

Still, few modern comedies even try as much at once as Paul, and if there’s not room for everything the filmmakers could have done there’s still quite a lot – including at least a dozen inspired references to all those 80s sci-fi adventures. Listen for them pepper their way through the dialogue, because they demonstrate the affection that fuels the entire movie. You don’t have to catch all of them, but you’ll probably feel closer to the characters if you do.

- Michael Kabel

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