I've had a very hard time trying to figure out how to write about SUPER 8, J.J. Abrams' Spielbergian tribute-band-but-we-do-our-own-stuff-too of a movie.
The difficulty doesn't lie in discussing the subtle Abrams reworking of Spielbergian thematic content, or the strong character work turned in by both the child and adult actors, or even a retroactive look at CLOVERFIELD as a sort of proof-of-concept and/or companion piece for this film. No, those things would all sort of write themselves, and by throwing them out there this early, I'm kind of hoping to get credit for writing four articles at once. The problem, for me, is how to talk about this film the way I want to talk about it. Because, to me, SUPER 8 really reminded me of one of the seminal moments in a movie adolescence: seven minutes in heaven.
I feel like this might be controversial, but it really shouldn't be. I mean, the argument could be made that the film is predominantly about children, and no one wants to bring sexuality anywhere near there. For example, no one wants to read (or write) about the homosexual undertones between Eliot and E.T. It would muddy the purity of that film, and our relationship to it. That's why we'll never see E.T.'s junk, even though that little freak's naked the whole movie. However, I would argue that SUPER 8 is far more about adolescence than it is about childhood. So let's just accept that as true, not leave me any angry comments about how I'm a pedophile, and move on.
You may have sensed that I have mixed feelings about SUPER 8, and this leads me to why it reminds me of seven minutes in heaven. Not any seven minutes in heaven, though. Specifically the second seven minutes you spend there.
Now, full disclosure: I feel like the whole idea of "seven minutes in heaven" may be a media creation that I'm feeding into here, and God knows I've never been to a party where such shenanigans took place. Maybe the kids have redefined the term and are doing unspeakable acts in those seven minutes, and this whole thing will come off like the Al Gore Internet-as-tubes speech of youthful sexual activity (wow, look at all the inappropriate word choices there). But in my day, and for the purposes of this article, we're talking about a straight-up makeout session.
The first makeout is a seminal moment. You never forget it. It's exhilarating, dangerous, and terrifying. You're not sure what's going on, you don't know what you're feeling, and suddenly the world seems a much larger, much more complicated place. But the second time you go in there? There's an eagerness to get back to that strange feeling, to be sure, but after a while, you kind of feel like you're going through the motions. Regardless of what happens in that room, though, you're still expected to come out of there grinning, shaking your head at the awesomeness that just transpired.
Metaphor over. There's a lot to like, and even love, about SUPER 8. But it never really seems to become more than the sum of its parts, to transcend its influences and become its own creation. It comes closest when the film is about the joy of running around shooting movies with your friends, an experience so profoundly drawn on screen that I have trouble recalling it without smiling. But the alien drama quickly overshadows that, and the film has trouble reconciling those two stories. In fact, Abrams has talked in several places about how the film originated out of these two distinct ideas, and the script still bears some of those scars from joining them. It's a bit of a Frankenstein of a movie, a cut-and-paste collage of the things we loved as kids. There is one moment, the emotional climax of the film, that attempts to link the arcs of the protagonists of the film, that just can't quite pull it off.
But if that one moment had worked for me, I think that SUPER 8 would be an instant classic. How's that for a mixed review?
