Super 8

I just watched Super 8, literally, it ended 10 minutes ago.  Super 8 is an excellent, excellent film.  The story of a group of middle schoollers trying to make a movie for an amateur film competition.  In the course of the filming they witness an epic train wreck and a military secret escapes.  One of the boys, Joe Lamb, is living life in the shadow of his mothers death.  The girl of the hour, Alice, also lives alone with her father after her mother left.  Alice's father works in the local steel mill, Joe's is the sheriff's deputy.  It is revealed, as the movie moves forward that it was Alice's father's shift that Joe's mother covered on the day she was killed in an industrial accident.

There is a distance between Joe and his father, his mother, Elizabeth, had always been the bridge between the two of them, the compassion and the outlet and the soft, affectionate rock upon which they could build a family.  In her absence a wedge takes her place as neither Joe or his father know how to reach out to one another so they go on being who they are:  different.

I heard a commentator say something to the extent of Super 8 is a collage of The Goonies, E.T., and Transformers (the collective minds behind the film are J.J. Abrams and Steven Speilberg) and they are right.  There is all of the visually striking action that Abrams is known for but, as well, a gripping and compelling story about the bravery of children faced with hard choices and real life.  The story is excellent in it simplicity and the characters are as deep as the plot line is simple. 

Super 8 is authentic and I found myself relating, at different times, with each of the characters as they struggled with misunderstanding, fear, loss, abandonment, and hope.  It is a heart warming adventure story compelling to the end and absolutely entertaining.