No pun intended but ‘Super 8’ is in almost every way a throwback to an earlier generation of filmmaking.  I know I’m not the first person to say this but the early works of Spielberg are all over this bad boy.  You don’t have to be a film geek as much as you have to be someone who grew up in my generation to see implied or explicit moments that will remind you of ‘Jaws’, ‘E.T.’ and ‘The Goonies’ all within the first 30 minutes.  (And that’s just the beginning.)  It’s ironic in a way because a complaint I hear a lot is ‘Why doesn’t someone make movies like early Spielberg?’ and I definitely feel ‘Super 8’ works in part because this film would fit in perfectly with any of the films Spielberg was making at that point in his career.

So is this an all time classic?  I gravitate toward no even though I liked it.  Maybe it’s just that my view on the world has obviously ‘grown up’ as well, but the on the nose sentimentality that worked so well when I was a kid now feels, well, too on the nose.  So what’s the story about?  If you haven’t heard yet I won’t go into it here since the plot of the film is essentially a ‘What’s Going On?’ type of story.  But I will extend a congratulations to the folks behind this film, since I don’t know how in this day and age you keep the casual viewer from finding out the plot of a big budget film like this.

Final note, and this is for a very small group of you: my favorite part of the film to be honest was the end credits.  It’s funny no matter who you are, but if you ever had to have one of your teenage homies play the head of a major crime syndicate, you’ll get an extra chuckle and bit of nostalgia out of the credit sequence.