Movie reviews

AS A young boy Steven Spielberg sent his toy trains crashing into one another, filming the result on 8mm home-movie film; Orson Welles once described making movies as the biggest electric train-set a boy ever had.

In Super 8 (12A), JJ Abrams’ celebrates the exuberant innocence of movie-making in a ‘70s-set tale in which a group of geeky teens accidentally film a train crash whilst shooting their home-made zombie movie. “Production values!” whoops the teen director, unaware that the crash has unleashed an extra-terrestrial being transported by the US Air Force.

What follows is Abrams’ love letter to Spielberg, who serves as executive producer here; while the story has an undeniable charm all of its own, it also makes a virtue of stealing from the genius, as writer-director Abrams’ blends crucial elements from ET and Jaws, whilst also investing the story with the anarchic fun of The Goonies. Most of the movie’s self-generated charm comes courtesy of its pint-sized hero, the motherless Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), whose burgeoning romance with Alice (Elle Fanning) provides an authentic quality of geeky awkwardness and callow emotional intelligence.