Super 8 (2011)

This is a hoot. We laughed at the awesome explosions (best train crash ever!) and saw producer Steven Spielberg's fingerprints all over director/writer J.J. Abrams' sci-fi thriller of 1979 movie-making teenagers uncovering a mystery in a fictitious western Ohio town (filming locations were actually in West Virginia and L.A.). Some examples of Spielbergisms: kids on BMX bikes, kids making movies, lights shining into the camera lens (often the beams extended with use of filters), caves, and many other parallels of his work (my favorites among the 50 he directed are, in order, The Color Purple (1985) (I have a special fondness for this one because of the book and because I worked at the office next door and got to meet some of the principals when it was in pre-production), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Schindler's List (1993), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Terminal (2004), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Jurassic Park (1993), and more on down the list) (he has been listed as producer on 130 titles, including 19 from 2011 forward, and writer on 21). Abrams, who makes no secret of his idolatry of Spielberg, is best known as the co-creator of the TV series Lost, wrote the Mike Nichols-directed Regarding Henry (1991), and directed Mission Impossible III (2006), which was the most expensive movie by a first time director, as well as Star Trek, and I would say he's getting the hang of it. He named the town Lillian after his grandmother and the prominently placed Kelvin gas station after his grandfather.

The young actors do a great job. There's Joel Courtney (now 15) in his debut as Joe, Elle Fanning (now 13, she's been acting since the age of 11 months in I Am Sam (2001), and I also quite liked The Door in the Floor (2004), Babel (2006), Deja Vu (2006), I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With,  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Somewhere) who brings a great deal of maturity to Alice, Riley Griffiths (14) in his feature debut as the movie-within-a movie's director Charles, Ryan Lee (14, has been acting since 2006 but I haven't seen any of it) as Cary the kid with braces, and Gabriel Basso (age not listed, looks 16+, and plays the son in the excellent Showtime series The Big C) as excitable Martin, who wears glasses. I haven't seen the series Friday night Lights, so am not familiar with Kyle Chandler, who plays Joe's deputy father here, but he's fine, as is Ron Eldard (was in some truly wonderful movies: the black comedy The Last Supper (1995), Barry Levinson's Sleepers (1996), Black Hawk Down (2001), and House of Sand and Fog (2003)) as Alice's dad.

On to the music. Composer Michael Giacchino, composer on 90 titles, including every episode of Lost, Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Ratatouille (for which he was Oscar-nominated), Up (for which he won an Oscar), and more, channels Spielberg's regular collaborator John Williams in the soundtrack (for tracks from the movie listen here, here, here, and here, or go to the itunes page for clips--release date August 2), supplemented by songs from the era, listed here with videos. Giacchino also has a cameo as Deputy Crawford.

There are a number of anachronisms, listed here (I'm not worried about the one named as a spoiler), but we didn't notice because they were mostly off by only a year or two.

You shouldn't be tempted to leave before the credits because the completed zombie movie that the kids make is shown immediately after the end of the real movie. Rottentomatoes' critics rated this 81% and audiences 80%. It's good fun for a couple of air-conditioned hours.