Kids in the film were engaging and believable, which is rare.
Agreed. I mean, yes, the kids from The Goonies could be cartoon characters at times, no question, but when they were going back and forth in conversation that fight incredibly real to me. Like me and my friends - being roughly the same age as the characters a the time - talking and shouting at each other getting overly exuberant.
Since Super 8 is a much darker film in tone than The Goonies, and since J.J. Abrams was directing, the cartoon was stripped away. They were still interesting kids, just more real.
BTW, that kid with the braces? His comedic timing was top notch!
A lot of folks call this a big love letter to Steven Spielberg's earlier work. I'd agree, but not entirely.
I think it went back and forth between being a Spielberg film and Abrams film equally till about the last ten to fifteen minutes when it became all Spielberg. With Abrams taking it back with the kid's film during the credits.
The Spielberg notes are unmistakable, but Abrams gave these characters and their reactions to what was happening a lot of realism in a movie so fantastical in scope.
I mean, not disrespect to Spielberg, but when the blonde girl gave that long speech about what happened to her father and the camera never cut away… I don’t see a Spielberg film able to pull that off.
In any case a fun, fun movie. If I was a kid that never saw a single early Spielberg film it’d probably be mind blowing.
And as great as all these comic book movies are, I'm glad to see a science fiction flick that's not based on any previously existing property. Nice change of pace.
