‘Super 8’ entertains with references to Spielberg’s hits

At long last -- a big-budget, big-studio summer movie that's not a sequel or a remake.

Not officially, anyway,

Even so, you've seen "Super 8" before. That is, if you're old enough to remember the days when summer blockbusters, especially those directed by Steven Spielberg, conveyed gee-whiz wonder and genuine movie magic.

If, however, you've been raised on a diet of soulless special-effects workouts, "Super 8" might rank as something of a popcorn-movie revelation.

It's not exactly a bracingly original, or even especially imaginative, vision, but it neatly illustrates a time-honored cinematic principle: It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.

And director J.J. Abrams -- with more than a little help, we suspect, from producer Spielberg himself -- delivers a solid, satisfying mash-up of Spielberg's greatest hits.

Indeed, part of the fun in watching "Super 8" is playing spot-the-source as Abrams whips things into a fine frenzy.

The very fact that we can play mix-and-match while we're watching (Look! Another "E.T." reference! And wasn't that last bit lifted from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"?) shows Abrams still has a way to go when it comes to breathless, can't-take-your-eyes-off-the-screen intensity.

But at least there's something to think about, which is more than we can say for most contemporary sci-fi workouts these days. (Including 2008's Abrams-produced "Cloverfield.")

As a throwback to a more innocent movie era, it seems fitting that "Super 8" takes place in 1979.

We know it's 1979 because we hear then-CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite reporting on the Three Mile Island nuclear incident. But we also know it's 1979 by the music (from Electric Light Orchestra to the Knack) and the all-American Buicks and Pontiacs prowling the streets of the movie's small Ohio town.

"Super 8's" title also offers a clue to the low-tech era it calls home, focusing as it does on a group of young wannabe filmmakers.

Because it's 1979, before digital recorders and even home video cameras had become standard technology, the movie's middle-schoolers used Super 8 film to capture their visions -- just as their parents used Super 8 to record the baby steps, birthdays and other happy moments of their children's lives.

Except that nobody's feeling particularly happy in Lillian, Ohio, these days.

There's been a deadly accident at the local steel mill, leaving a deputy sheriff (stalwart Kyle Chandler) and his son Joe (bright, earnest Joel Courtney) devastated -- and unable to share their grief.

Good thing Joe's take-charge pal Charles (a brash Riley Griffiths) has enlisted him to help him make a movie. Good thing, too, that Joe's an expert model maker and makeup artist -- because Charles' Super 8 opus is a detective story with a zombie twist.

Little do they and their filmmaking friends dream that they're about to star in a monster movie all their own, as they discover late one night when they're shooting a train-station scene featuring tremulous Preston (a nicely nerdy Gabriel Basso) as the movie's detective hero and the alluring Alice (sensitive Elle Fanning) as his loyal wife, pretending to be what her own mother isn't: there for her family.

Just as they're ready to shoot the scene, a freight train comes rumbling down the tracks -- delighting Charles, who knows "added production value" when he sees it.

What the kids see next, however, sets a perplexing series of events in motion: a pickup truck pulling onto the tracks, in the path of the train, triggering a spectacular crash that unleashes something (or, more properly, some thing) on the town's unsuspecting residents.

Suddenly all sorts of strange happenings start to occur, drawing the interest of a hard-charging Air Force officer (blustery Noah Emmerich) who has no problem ordering everyone around.

That, naturally, doesn't sit well with Joe's dad, charged with protecting the town and its residents. From what, nobody's quite sure. Except maybe for the Air Force types -- who aren't talking.

They don't need to. Not with writer-director Abrams eager to show us just enough to keep us uneasy in our plush theater seats.

Throughout, Abrams maintains a crucial focus -- not so much on whatever's out there, but on how it impacts our young protagonists, trying to find their way in a world that's confusing enough under ordinary circumstances.

And these are hardly ordinary circumstances. Especially for Joe and Alice, who are both struggling with absent mothers and troubled fathers -- Joe's distracted by grief, Alice's (a poignant Ron Eldard) a perpetually soused screw-up.

The youngsters, and the movie, find refuge in the filmmaking group's amusing camaraderie, whether it's the resident pyrotechnical expert, and possible pyromaniac (Ryan Lee), or the impossibly bossy Charles' budding-dictator directorial style.

And while "Super 8" sometimes goes for (too) easy laughs, the movie once again demonstrates that those trademark Spielberg techniques retain their impact on audiences, 35 years after "Jaws" changed summer movies -- make that all movies -- for all time.

Whether the camera's tracking forward, building emotion as it moves ever closer to its characters, or surveying a seemingly endless horizon (and pondering what might be beyond it), Abrams reveals a thorough understanding of what makes Spielberg such a supreme visual stylist.

At his best, however, Spielberg is far more than a mere stylist -- and that, ultimately, is where "Super 8" falls a bit short.

For all its technical wizardry and engaging characters, there's very little magic -- movie or otherwise -- on display. It's a quality you sense, rather than see.

And there's not enough of it in "Super 8" to make it as insistently memorable as its inspirations, even a pale copy seems far more vivid than the current competition.

Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.