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88A wonderful film, nostalgia not for a time but for a style of filmmaking, when shell-shocked young audiences were told a story and not pounded over the head with aggressive action.
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88Super 8 is in many ways a perfect summer movie: smart, exciting, heartfelt, and suffused with nostalgia.
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75It's an enjoyable, well-acted, old-school geekfest pitting a group of middle-school students against an escaped monster from outer space.
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75This movie, a true beauty, will put a spell on you.
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100The pacing is superb, quick and agile without being frenzied, and the special effects are jaw-dropping.
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100Loving, Playful, and spectacularly well made, Super 8 is easily the best summer movie of the year - of many years.
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75There's a thin line, though, between honoring what came before you and replicating it, and Super 8 occasionally wobbles over that line into predictability.
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60This melding of two cinematic sensibilities, though effective at moments, is finally not as exciting or involving as it we'd like it to be.
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90This new film isn't perfect, and may not be a world-changer, but it's certainly a world-pleaser.
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88This sci-fi thriller has an engrossing plot and a strong cast of fully drawn characters. There's even a sweet youthful love story. In other words, it's a summer blockbuster firing on all cylinders.
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50The actors are talented enough to carry the movie, but they fade into the background once things grow dire, and the special effects take over. There's no sense of wonder or awe.
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75Super 8 takes its place among the best B-grade science fiction movies of this generation by copying the best of the past 50 years.
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67Ultimately, it's the period and character details in Super 8 that provide the grist for its winning formula, rather than its emotional arc and monster jolts.
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83It's spirited and funny and deeply entertaining, a summer movie for kids who think like adults and adults who feel like kids.
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58If Abrams had stuck with the kids and cut way back on all the sci-fi hoo-ha, his film might have stood a fighting chance of being charming. Big is not always better, even when it comes to fantasies.
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60Like his (Abrams) previous features, "Mission: Impossible III" and "Star Trek," Super 8 is an enticing package without much inside.
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63All the kids here are terrific, significantly better than the actual movie that surrounds them. Although ostensibly fashioned by Abrams, it's really a summer-weight Spielberg yarn.
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70Like an old airplane (or spacecraft) jerry-rigged from scrap pieces and made air-worthy again, Super 8 has been patched together with 30-year-old spare parts to provide an enjoyable ride of its own.
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75Abrams knits together the ordinary stories of the mill town's inhabitants in a way that feels dramatic without showing their contrivances too obviously. And his casting of Courtney and Fanning was fortuitous, though Abrams' banter for the supporting kids grows tiresome in that "Goonies" way.
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75The unforced performances of Courtney and Fanning are remarkable.
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90It'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.
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63All too often the plot feels calculated rather than organic, the result of a time-tested formula rather than genuine innovation.
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80A big-bang demolition derby, J.J. Abrams's much-anticipated, greatly enjoyable Super 8 seems bound for box-office glory.
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75Its pleasures are borrowed, but durable.
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60This uneven but often charming movie produced by Spielberg gets so many things right, including its practiced naivete. What's missing, however, is a crucial sense of connection to itself.
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100The year's most thrilling, FEELING mainstream movie.
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60It would be easy to dismiss as 100 percent ersatz if it didn't rekindle at least some of the old excitement - and if the magic of Spielberg's older movies didn't filter through, like light from a distant galaxy.
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75Such a disarming homage to the cinema of the Reagan era that even grouchy gremlins might feel like it's morning in America. But be forewarned that if this movie is exposed to sunlight, you'll notice the puppet strings.
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60Had the big boy himself, Steven Spielberg, made his directorial debut with this slam-bang sci-fi thriller set in suburban 1979 (and not merely produced what amounts to an homage), he would have been celebrated as a gifted bringer of mayhem: a Michael Bay before there was one.
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80It is just a tremendous amount of fun.
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100J.J. Abrams, with Steven Spielberg producing, has made one of those jaw-dropping out-of-body summer entertainments that kids old enough to swear and see PG-13 films will remember on into adulthood.
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100A movie of here-and-now thrills, goosed by judicious CGI effects that never overpower the humanity of the situation.
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50Writer-director J.J. Abrams overloads this sci-fi adventure with so many homages to his co-producer Steven Spielberg that it plays like the elder director's greatest hits, minus his characteristic scares and sense of wonder.
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83Creepy implications keep Super 8 engaging, but the cast makes it click.
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50The best thing about Super 8, by far, are the kids, all perfectly cast. The script does a much better job making them believable and real than the adults...The rest of the movie steals shamelessly from...
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65The timing couldn't be more opportunistic for a new Steven Spielberg movie that mines the thrilling uncertainties of childhood - even if it happens to have been made by J.J. Abrams.
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50J.J. Abrams's latest puts a modern spin on classical material, though here reinvention isn't the goal so much as slavish duplication embellished with muscular CG effects.
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60Super 8 is at its best when it dwells in this secret childhood empire, and at its worst when it juices up its essentially simple story with increasingly senseless action set pieces.
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80It's nowhere close to "E. T." - what is? - but amongst the hullabaloo of summer, Super 8 is something to cherish: a beautifully made homage to better times, and better movies.
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Jun 5, 201150A relatively standard monster movie.
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Jun 2, 201150It's in the moments Abrams attempts to combine emotional payoffs with popcorn-style thrills that the film rings most false.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 189 out of 238
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Mixed: 23 out of 238
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Negative: 26 out of 238
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4This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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