Super 8 spot on, sappy and superb

Michael Bay, eat your heart out.

The man who brought the tinnitus-inducing Transformers trilogy upon the world could learn a thing or two, or a million, about the fine art of subtlety from the unlikeliest of people: J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg.

Both are grandiose filmmakers with spectacular titles to their credit. At least they know the value of a story and how special effects should be used to enhance it, not replace it. The latter created the summer blockbuster of 1975 (Jaws) and the former, like so many others, has tried to model his best work on that example. It looks like he's really hit the mark here with a stellar look back into small town America and the human impact of some incredible occurrences.

Super 8 is the nostalgic and tender story of a boy and the mysterious alien creature that escaped from a dramatic train wreck and then terrorized a small community. Don't get too excited that this is another big-budget tent-pole action film. We barely get to see the beast, a stroke of brilliance that Abrams can't possibly deny lifting from Spielberg's shark-based shockfest: make the audience wait forever and then give them what they want. In the meantime, tug relentlessly at their tender heartstrings.

Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is a 13-year-old boy in the fictional Ohio town of Lillian. He just lost his mother to a tragic industrial accident, and his dad, the town cop, is not the most emotionally open individual. To deal with his loss, he finds himself spending more time with his friends and their quirky projects.

While making a low-budget zombie movie, Joe and his friends find themselves in the right place at the wrong time. Just as a train zooms past the station, it's struck by a truck, causing a massive derailment. The kids escape disaster but something bursts out of one of the train cars in the dark of night.

Thankful for their lives, they develop the film to discover small glimpses of whatever the thing was. Meanwhile, Lillian experiences a rash of unexplained phenomena and crimes — missing microwaves, power flickering and packs of stray dogs running away. Before people wise up and start leaving Hansel and Gretel trails of M&Ms to entice the creature, it attacks and hauls them away, never to be seen.

And that's when the air force evacuates everybody that's still alive but doesn't tell anyone what's going on. Col. Nelec (Noah Emmerich) finds out the kids filmed the whole thing including the top secret extraterrestrial. Not only that, they discover a military film that reveals crucial details about its telepathic psychological powers.

Really, there isn't that much work in suspending disbelief here because all the actors, mostly teens and pre-teens, are so good at what they do. That's something Bay couldn't accomplish with Shia Labeouf and $225 million at his disposal. His version of understatement is an exploding planet. All that you really have to put up with here are some logic gaps, but hey — it's sci-fi! Anything is possible.

Super 8 is an entirely human drama about growing up in an unpredictable world where bad things happen through no one's fault. With help from producer Spielberg, director Abrams has taken key elements of Jaws and E.T. and thrown in heaping gobs of sappy sentimentalism to appeal to a broader audience. This isn't a creature feature. It isn't an alien monster movie. It isn't even about the woes of growing up. It's all of those things, and more, and it's brilliant. This is the kind of movie that should stand the test of time.