Saturday, June 18, 2011

Theater Whore: Super 8


I watched Super 8 after the urging of a few of my friends who enjoyed the film. I’m not a huge Steven Spielberg fan who produced this or J.J Abrams who directed. I liked Felicity and the latest Star Trek film. Didn’t like Lost or Alias. When I first saw the trailer for this last year I was like “Whoa.” It was just a train car shaking violently and that was it. All I could think was “Whatever the hell is in that thing it better be awesome!

I’m a huge fan of aliens so when I found out that this was about that I was all excited. But then I remembered J.J Abrams last film with aliens. Yes, Cloverfield. That fucking film made me want to throw up with the amount of shaking in it. So now I’m nervous. Will I get sick? Will I be annoyed? Will I chase Abrams down and box his ears?

Spoilers below!

Just so you know I’m not listing the actors in this movie. Most are not well known, this is their first film, or its not important to me talking about this. So the movie starts off with this kid at a wake for his mom who died in an accident at work. This is Normal Kid. His friend, Fat Kid, is making a film in which Normal Kid is the makeup artist. They meet up with their other friends Panicky Kid and Weird Kid. There’s also the love interest who happens to be Dakota Fanning’s younger sister (but she looks older…) who will be known as Creepy Girl.

While filming their zombie film a train crashes after a truck hits it head on. The kids survive, God knows how! Seriously, that wreck should have destroyed anything within a mile of it. They run (actually drive) off but not before Normal Kid steals a small cube from the wreckage. The guy that causes the wreck is one of
their teachers who tells them not to talk about what happened. So what do you think they do?

Nothing but talk about it in public places!

Normal Kid’s dad is a cop who is never around and now super busy and Creepy Girl’s dad is a drunk. They butt heads because the drunk dad didn’t show up for work and Normal Kid’s mom got crushed to death covering for him. Isn’t that always the way it goes?

The army shows up and says it was just an accident and start looking for clues as to who witnessed the wreck. The cop dad doesn’t believe they are on the level while drunk dad continues to drink. The kids keep filming even though the town is overrun with military, people are vanishing, pets are running away, and electronic shit is disappearing. The sheriff gets snatched and has his car crushed while this gas station attendant is listening to the brand new product, The Walkman! No matter how loud it is, a Walkman wont block the vibrations of a fucking car being slammed twenty feet from you!

People are panicking, kids are filming, a creature is killing folks, feelings are being hurt, and the dogs are in the next town. Shit’s getting real. There’s really too much going on in this film. I mean, I like some of it but there’s so much stuff floating around its hard to get attached to anything. The kid’s mom dying. The fucking zombie film. The military. Parents relationships with their kids. Magic cubes that shake at night. Just…a lot of stuff.

I didn’t hate this movie but then again I wouldn’t tell anyone to go see it. If it were on TV it would be fine in the background. The kids cursing started to get annoying really early in the film. It was like “Okay, I get it. Kids curse a lot…” but it got old quickly. And the touching ending actually made me leer at the screen. I’m supposed to feel touched when you finally let your mother go (after four entire months of grieving can you hear the sarcasm as I type?!) when you spend most of the time pining after a girl you don’t know? Come on now. And the alien looked like the Devil’s asshole with legs and sounded like a horse when it ran.

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