Super 8

Trailers for J J Abrams' newest film have been floating around on the internet for a very long time now. The earliest ones made 'Super 8' look like a rip off of The Crazies (already a remake of course), though more recent versions seemed to focus on its young protagonists. It wasn't clear if we were in for a monster slasher or a rerun of the Goonies - or maybe a bit of both.

Some of that was cleared up by the Radio 5 review last Friday. Kermode's on holiday so they've got 'Boyd and Floyd' in for the summer weeks. One of Boyd or Floyd is from Ilford - big up. Sadly I can't tell them apart though. Their review made the film sound like a kids adventure, they even refused to talk about the monster-chasing elements as they said it'd be a spoiler. Obviously they'd never seen any trailers. Their review pointed out J J Abrams' obsession with lens flare, something I would never of thought of without them mentioning it - but annoying once you spot it every 5 minutes. They made a big deal of Abrams' self-confessed obsession with Super 8 film when he was a kid, and how he used to make his own films and even managed to get himself involved with Steven Spielberg's production company as a teenager. 'Super 8' is a film that clearly comes from the director's heart.

This is a throwback film to an age that I presumed never really was, but a world that J J Abrams grew up in (or maybe wished he did). It is 1979, the kids of a small Ohio town entertain themselves by making zombie movies on Super 8 film. When filming a crucial scene at an abandoned train station, they are involved in a huge train crash. Though they survive physically unscathed, the train was carrying something that the airforce don't want anyone to find. It's a massive monster.

It's the Goonies, the Famous Five and a bunch of Roald Dahl staples rolled into one. It's a world where children live lives unconstrained by the emotional baggage of adulthood. The children in the film live in a make believe world constructed under the noses of their parents. It's a world where everything is an adventure and where their imaginations - undulled by years of the strain of adulthood - help them accept the unreality of the fantastic situation going on in their town and work fearlessly to solve it.

I can imagine Abrams pitching this film to Steven Spielberg by getting him to imagine ET with a massive terrifying looking monster instead of a 3 foot gimp. It's a throwback film that romanticises the joy and innocence of youth, it's funny and jumpy in the right places and has a nice emotional kick that makes the young characters people to care about.

There's not much not to like about Super 8 - apart from that bloody lens flare. Also, there's a good end credits bonus that you should stick around in the cinema for. They show the full zombie movie that the kids were making, what I saw of it was pretty funny (missed the first bit).