Super 8

Movie Review

Moving-making magic: In the spirit of ‘ET,’ ‘Super 8’ takes us back in time

June 10, 2011|By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Zach Mills (left) and Kyle Chandler in a scene from J.J. Abramss Super 8. (FRANCOIS DUHAMEL/PARAMOUNT…)

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SUPER 8 Written and directed by: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Riley Griffiths, Kyle Chandler, and Ron Eldard

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs; Jordan’s IMAX, Reading

Running time: 112 minutes

Rated: PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, some drug use)

“Super 8’’ has been written and directed by J.J. Abrams, the wunderkind behind “Lost,’’ “Alias,’’ and the 2009 big-screen “Star Trek,’’ but its DNA comes straight from the original boy genius himself. Set in 1979, the movie’s a honey-colored evocation of Steven Spielberg’s most iconic period, when the director looked at small-town America from the deck of a visiting spaceship. It’s like finding a vintage Schwinn Stingray at a high-end bike store: From the no-name cast of resourceful kids to the flawed, good-hearted grown-ups to the extraterrestrial going bump in the night, “Super 8’’ is a fond and unexpected throwback to the days of “E.T.’’ and “Close Encounters.’’ You sense Spielberg agreed to produce the film just to make sure they’d get everything right.

And they have, for the most part. The new movie struggles at times to balance the innocence of its inspirations with the demolition-derby demands of the modern movie marketplace — you almost feel Spielberg wrestling with Michael Bay for possession of Abrams’s soul — but in the end the humor and the humanity outweigh the big-bang-boom. And the movie’s tip of the hat to the joys of making monster movies with your friends grounds it firmly in the personal.

Yes, boys and girls, this is how you did it before cellphones and YouTube came along. You borrowed dad’s home-movie camera, rounded up your pals, and biked off to a vacant lot. There was always one bossy kid who ended up directing. In real life that was Spielberg himself, but here it’s the husky, imperious Charles (Riley Griffiths). The guy who liked to blow things up became your special-effects guru; Ryan Lee as Cary seems very much the second coming of Jackie Earle Haley.

You had your leading man (Gabriel Basso as the self-serious Martin) and your extra (Zach Mills as the nerdy Preston). If you were lucky, you had a girl (Elle Fanning as Alice, from the wrong side of the tracks and much crushed upon by the others). And you had the one kid who did a little bit of everything and who is this movie’s hero — both its Elliot and its Roy Neary. Joey Lamb (Joel Courtney) has just lost his mother and he doesn’t know how to talk to his deputy sheriff dad (Kyle Chandler), but he knows the girl of his dreams when he sees her and he turns out to have a cool head in a crisis.