This movie is just a delight -- my second wonderful summer film bauble after Midnight in Paris. It’s not aiming to give great insight or to move or to thrill. Super 8 is just a fun, smart homage to Steven Spielberg’s film-making without cynicism or irony.And that's its value and attraction. I’ve tried on my own to sit down and make a list of the components of Spielberg’s film style, and I’ve pretty much always failed to find a uniqueness that would distinguish him from others. I’ve always sensed it and felt I could recognize a Spielberg film, but I couldn’t tell someone what I was responding to.
Abrams, though, nails it. His lens flairs, the long train wreck, his focus on children and (especially) their relationship to their fathers, the pure kid and the flawed adult, the strong foregrounding, the misunderstood alien, the mysterious government……yeah, ALL these are Spielberg. This film is the best description of a Spielberg style that I’ve seen, and while I totally enjoyed the film, I also came away with a vision of Spielberg’s work that I hadn’t had before I saw it.
So Super 8 is a pretty good way to spend a couple of summer hours. It foregrounds Spielberg's style while making it work on the viewer. What a pleasure.....now back to Close Encounters.
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