Remember a time before aliens were scary and it was more about the awe of discovery and the wonder of the unknown? Films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all managed to capture these feelings without going the way so many alien films tend to go these days with pitched battles and overly elaborate plots of invasion. In most of these stories, the protagonists were children and you, the audience, were able to identify with that stage in childhood where everything new and exciting was a discovery. If you have not seen these classics, I would highly recommend you check your movie channels if you get your television through places like http://www.cable.tv/compare-providers/.
Super 8 is a call back to those classics and feels very much like the kind of alien movie your parents might have grown up with. While the story follows the kind of formula you might expect, it also deviates by shifting the focus mostly on the lives of a group of friends growing up and going on adventures together. Super 8, in many ways, is less about an alien incursion and more about the struggles and trials and tribulations of young love and growing up – a modern classic.
