Super 8: Super? Riiiiiiiiight...

When you hear about a collaborative effort by Lost creator and Star Trek director JJ Abrams and THE Steven Spielberg, you have to think it's going to be a movie that's going to take your breath away with its story-telling and good filmmaking. Well, at least you would think that it would be a really good one.

Enter Super 8, a movie about a group of pre-adolescent kids who, in the process of shooting a short film on an 8mm camera, stumble upon a catastrophe that blows a secret US Air Force operation into the open. They then embark on a mission to finish their film while using the ensuing chaos and commotion brought about by the catastrophe and the Air Force's subsequent takeover of their hometown as the backdrop.

Well, at least that should have been how the story progressed if they wanted to keep the title relevant.
Instead, what you get is a smorgasbord of at least four stories that they try to fit together but just can't quite do so. The pieces, although very closely related, just didn't morph into a smooth movie experience for the audience.

Props to Dakota Fanning's younger sister Elle Fanning for showing that the acting chops run in the family. Fanning plays Alice Dainard, the girl who turns out to be the love interest of the movie's central figure, Joe Lamb (played by Joel Courtney). She was the Juliet to Lamb's Romeo. Only thing is this love story had a better ending.

Courtney himself pulls off a good performance. It's really hard to interpret a character whose world has just been turned upside down and whose immediate future is marked with a lot of uncertainty, but the kid pulled it off pretty sufficiently. His change of character after falling for Dainard (oh, puppy love, how it makes you do things you thought you'd never do) was nice to see, and the difference in his character when with his other friends and when alone with her was at the very least cute.

The rest of the young ensemble actually did well also. First-time movie actor Riley Griffiths did well as Charles  Kaznyk, Joe's closest friend and the writer/director of the short film that they were shooting. The other friends in the film-making team, Ryan Lee (who played pyrotechnic borderline pyromaniac and sole zombie in the short film Cary), Zach Mills (playing the phone handling Preston), and Gabriel Basso (who provided some of the funnier moments when he was either crying, feigning a heart attack, or vomiting as Martin, who was also the lead actor of their short film) all did pretty okay.

Props to Kyle Chandler (playing Joe's father Jackson, the deputy sheriff) and Ron Eldard (playing Alice's father and town drunk Louis Dainard), who, given the short time they interacted, did pretty well as the Lords Montague and Capulet of this movie.

But the performances of the actors was never the problem with this movie. It was really the story itself and the story-telling. Story A - the coming of age of the young ensemble while experiencing shooting a film together - got a huge Story B - the alien escapee and the US Air Force's taking over the town - in the background. All this while Story C - the family feud between the Lambs and the Dainards - is happening as well. And to add a whole different layer, Story A prime - the developing friendship/romance between Joe and Alice - is inserted.

What do you end up with? Romeo and Juliet meets Reality Bites meets ET! And I think it would have actually worked if the story was told a little bit better. Now I can't begin to suggest how it should have been done as that would require some more thinking, but I am sure somewhere in that assortment of stories was a way to mix them together into a chop suey that might have been more palatable to the audience's taste.

The movie was pretty bad so much so that when my girlfriend asked the friend I watched the movie with (he's into films as much as I am and pays good money to watch epic films on iMAX) how it was, all he could say was that he liked the cinema (Shang Cineplex) and thinks that he'll go back to watch movies there more. Yes, ladies and gents, no mention of the movie, just the cinema.

I give this flick three and a half rolls of 8mm film for acting performance and one roll for story and story-telling. Catch it on DVD or when they finally show it on HBO or Star Movies if you can wait. If not, I advise you to stay all the way till the end of the credits, as the Easter egg they put in was, for me, more enjoyable than the almost two hours of the actually movie.