I finally got around to seeing Super 8, which was well worth the $5 I spent to see it, and in part because I also saw Horrible Bosses on the same budget; the erratic quality of both films combined to create a sum greater than my expenditure, if we leave out the cost of popcorn and beverage. (I like to pretend that snacks are off budget, and fungible, and that the snacks eaten at the movies would have been eaten elsewhere in another form anyway, and thus, no net increase in costs).
My main thoughts center around Super 8, a predictably retro alien movie, but let me just drop a pet peeve before continuing.
Horrible Bosses had a good premise, but was ultimately ruined by the outlandishness of the script, which called for multiple attempted murders, thus leaving a great cast to wallow in absurdities. And when not also wallowing in a certain amount of deviance. Like Cedar Rapids, which I caught via Amazon stream, Horrible Bosses attempted to amuse us with certain bizarre sexual acts, and I've grown really tired of Hollywood writers who think that shock value can substitute for true humor. How many times do we have to see the otherwise straight laced main characters accidentally get snozzed with coke, provoking frenzy and mayhem? Lacking the courage to make a character an actual drug enthusiast, with all the life cratering sludge that would follow, we are left with the accidental dope usage and asked to laugh at the hi-jinks. It's tired and boring. But I digress in the wrong direction.
Super 8 was entertaining but left me feeling like I had seen it all before. Which, I probably have. It seemed to borrow from every alien movie of the past, giving us an alien who wants to eat us, but only some of us, and only as a snack while rebuilding his aircraft and figuring a way back home. Set back in the 1980's, we get a bunch of kids who are into filmmaking, though lacking the conveniences of our current era where you can turn out a masterpiece that nobody wants to see on YouTube via your Android or Apple.
The story itself is pretty toss-able. Alien arrives, government somehow captures and captivates (literally) super strong and highly advanced alien, alien frees itself via scripted unlikelihood, alien gets chased and kills a few unworthies, kids run around without parents, parents run around somewhat oblivious as to where kids are until scripted moment of reflection, kids encounter alien, two species communicate via meaningful eye contact, alien creates spaceship out of crap and scriptural magic, spaceship flies off, humans look up in awe, credits.
But it was a captivating film, meaning, I didn't start feeling sleepy, or sit thinking, "Uhm, okay" like I did through certain parts of another film I saw recently. The Tree of Life was playing at my local arsty theater in Scottsdale and darned if I was not going to see it on opening day. While it carried big name stars, like Brad Pitt and a muted Sean Penn, I was more interested in whatever pretensions the director was trying to pull off. For that first half hour I sat watching an almost silent film that was infused with flecks of prehistoric imagery: volcanoes, flashes, stuff rushing around, dinosaurs, the stars of the film not actually saying anything we could hear.
I stared at the screen and stayed awake through that opening onslaught because I knew it was supposed to be some deep foundation upon which the rest of the film would build, and if you are asleep, how deep and intellectual can you appear to your fellow moviegoers? It's just not proper to fall asleep during moments like this, so you put on your introspective face and just stare at the screen like you are taking it all in and getting every nuance. (Sometimes you bring your hand up to your chin and finger your beard so that people down the row will think you are totally understanding some hidden modality they are missing). Thankfully my patience was rewarded with a heartwarming and carefully scripted and acted film that tracked the life of a family, and the relationship of a son with his father.
Which brings me back to J. J. Abram's Super 8. (Thought I got off point, didn't you?) Super 8 is less a film about aliens than it is a study of kids and it is their interaction with each other that carries us forward and keeps it interesting. That works out well enough, but the kids we are given strike that deja vu spot in the brain where you imagine that you have seen them before, maybe in Goonies or E.T. or some other Hollywood kid concoction from years gone by. That is, each kid is a type. We have a fat kid, we have a timid kid, we have the primary kid (as usual missing a parent) who gets the girl, we have the blond girl, we have the crazy kid who likes explosives. Each is a stereotype made to fit together in a motley crew upon which the director can hang plot points.
Heck, without the blond female, with lovingly long hair, are you really gonna run off after a creature from another planet who you have just seen kill and eat people? Of course not. In the Hollywood way of lensing the world, only a blond girl in trouble is gonna motivate you to do stupid stuff like confront aliens, or encourage your mousy explosives loving friend to create a decoy to "distract" the alien. (Apparently this was pre-bros before ho's).
While the acting was sufficient, and the faces relatively new and authentic, you still got the feeling that this was a Hollywood construct. There were moments of overacting, or moments of predictability that were glaring. They didn't seem so much to be real kids, as real kids acting in a movie, and with all that implies. You imagined some stage mother saying, "You need to be better than the fat kid in Stand By Me".
Which is also why I loved The Tree of Life, and offer it as contrast. You will sleep or curse through whole elements of the film because director Terrence Malick sometimes assumes that visuals in themselves convey deep meaning. Often they don't, and sticking such visuals into a family drama is a risky endeavor. Not that it can't be done, it's just that he does not do it exceedingly well. If God created the world in six days, certainly Malick could have created his more philosophical imagery in mere minutes of time, instead of long moments that caused extra popcorn indulgence.
That said, Malick nails it with his choice of child actors and their direction. There are entire scenes between brothers, between father and son(s), between friends, that thoroughly pull you in and make you feel like you are watching real lives and real relatives. The child actors don't seem to be acting, or overacting, or even aware of what they are doing. They don't pop out of the context of the script in words, actions, visuals or deed. Even the way they walk strikes authentic.
The Tree of Life has probably some of the best acting by young people I've seen on screen. There is one scene where the brothers and their friends are walking through the neighborhood, drifting aimlessly, pausing here and there to poke at this, look at that, and culminating in the breaking of a window. It's entirely authentic and reminds me of my own wanderings with friends, no destination in sight, nothing to do, nothing that had to be done, just drifting, walking, seeing what might turn up around the next corner.
That's what you want in a movie, the unexpected around the corner.
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