SUPER 8: Funny, scary, clever, convincing -- and loaded with heart and soul

Super 8 movie poster (google images)

***1/2 (out of four)

“Super 8” is a movie about kids making movies.

It’s also about a powerful alien monster.

And young love.

And a catastrophic train wreck.

And the 1970s.

More than anything, it’s about kids and parents dealing with grief and learning to treat each other decently.

In the grand tradition of early Steven Spielberg, “Super 8” is the first great movie of the summer -- funny, scary, clever, convincing and loaded to the gills with heart and soul.

Just as Spielberg did with Drew Barrymore, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw, it’ll make stars of folks you never heard of -- particularly the group of actors playing middle-school pals who stumble on a military secret while making an amateur movie about zombies.

Remember Henry Thomas in “E.T.”?  That’s how good Joel Courtney is as Joe Lamb, who is mourning the death of his mother while carrying a torch for the 15-year-old girl who agrees to star in the kids’ production.

And Elle Fanning (Dakota’s younger sis) is sensational as Joe’s crush, Alice -- particularly when she and Joe watch home-movie footage of him as a baby with his mom.

Count on seeing more of Fanning soon -- and often.

The ambitious youth who’s making the film has created a role for Alice because, he claims, it’ll give his amateur movie more emotion if his hero has a loving wife.

In this way, “Super 8’s” writer-director, J. J. Abrams, shows his hand about the way his movie operates.

Sure, it’s a dazzling action film -- chock full of huge explosions, nifty effects, frantic chases and tasty jolts.

But none of it would matter if we didn’t care about the characters, and in this regard Abrams takes a page (several in fact) from his childhood hero, Spielberg -- who also served as producer on “Super 8.”

Against the beautifully authenticated late-seventies time period, these kids -- with their forthright manner, hilarious insults and courage in the face of terror -- instill “Super 8” with the exuberance of early Spielberg efforts like “Goonies” and “Close Encounters.”

Meanwhile, Abrams brings some of the terror and authenticity of Spielberg’s “Jaws” and its predecessor -- his classic TV thriller “Duel” -- to the action scenes as well.

In particular, the computer imagery is carefully integrated with heavy doses of live action, giving the film a richly realistic visual palette; and Abrams resists showing us the whole monster till the very end.

The conviction in these sequences comes in Abrams' almost casual approach: Many of the wild effects are seen only in the background, only briefly, or only in grainy Super 8 footage, as though they got in by accident; Abrams simply tosses them off, and isn't worried much how clearly we see them.  

It's amazing how much authenticity this adds to the tale.  

On top of everything else, “Super 8” is uproariously funny -- often at the very same time that it has you by the throat in fear and suspense.

My only complaint was the nagging question of how a pickup truck caused a massive freight train to fly apart like a watermelon hit with a bazooka.

But that’s a quibble; in every other way, “Super 8” is dandy entertainment.