by Andrew O'Hehir
So "Super 8" is more like a mannered impression of a great '70s summer movie than the real thing, but that makes it just about perfect for our age of simulated sincerity. It's an expertly constructed thrill ride with wonderful atmosphere and tremendous good humor; if its heart of gold is artificial, that won't stop you from enjoying the heck out of it. This much-hyped collaboration between writer-director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg, who have known each other since Abrams was a child, is such a meta-conscious movie-movie fugue state that it goes well beyond concepts like homage or tribute into realms like "demonic possession" or "priestly ritual."
As you probably know by now, "Super 8" is a monster movie about a group of small-town kids in 1979 Ohio who are making a monster movie, and I guess it's that faint touch of postmodernism that makes it not exactly like a Spielberg project that didn't quite get made 30 years ago. Otherwise, the Spielbergian impersonation is uncannily complete, from the half-disillusioned, half-idealized portrayal of chaotic suburban family life to the secret confraternity of kid culture to the faint stirrings of political correctness to the overdetermined, almost architectural sentimentality of the last act. I kept fighting off the feeling that "Super 8" had actually been made by, say, Michael Haneke or David Lynch, in an opaque conceptual-art spirit of mockery. Or that some form of illicit horror-movie congress has occurred between director and producer: They merged, like the two women in Bergman's "Persona." Or Abrams has eaten Spielberg's brain and is wearing his skin.
