Metacritic reviews

The year's most thrilling, FEELING mainstream movie.

J.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.

A big-bang demolition derby, J.J. Abrams's much-anticipated, greatly enjoyable Super 8 seems bound for box-office glory.

Like 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.

It 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.

Had 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.

It's in the moments Abrams attempts to combine emotional payoffs with popcorn-style thrills that the film rings most false.

A relatively standard monster movie.

J.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.

The 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...