Attack the Block (2011-English)
*** out of *****
This film is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one. Though Attack the Block bares almost no resemblance to Super 8 -- for my money, the best blockbuster film of the summer -- comparisons between the two are inevitable: both films wear their influences on their sleeves. Where Super 8 aspired to the greatness of 80s classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and Stand by Me, Attack the Block seems to have been made under the sway of films like Gremlins and Critters. An impressive first feature, Attack the Block is going to get all sorts of critical hyperbole from the media establishment, but at its core, it's just entertainment. Don't expect anything great and you'll have a good time.
What sets Attack the Block apart from its inspirations is its setting, an inner-city South London neighborhood. The action starts after a group of kids from the "block" hold up a young nurse whom, unbeknownst to them, also lives in their building. After the kids are attacked by an alien ("You got beat by Dobby!" one of the kids exclaims), they ultimately have to band together with the other youthful residents of the building to fend off the impending invasion.
So clearly plot is not one of the film's strong suits. Neither are the aliens. Unlike Super 8, there is no mystery surrounding the other-worldly beings. We see the aliens pretty early in the movie and from that point on, it's hard to imagine anyone getting really scared by them. The film clearly didn't have too much budget for special effects and so the aliens look something like a cross between critters, gorillas, and ink blots. Yet, the fact that aliens appear to have been animated and not created in a CGI studio does not entirely ruin the film. Instead of focusing on alien attacks, the script wisely sticks to the kids.
What makes any film worth watching are the characters. I have to admit that I liked these kids. They were funny and interesting enough to warrant a movie -- any movie. They could have put these kids in a ghost story, a hard-hitting drama, or a romantic comedy, and I would have just enjoyed watching them interact. To an extent, these roles were written as "ghetto" stereotypes. I was troubled that our introduction to these kids was a mugging of a white woman. The fact that one of the muggers was white did not make the underlying racism of the scene any less troubling. Yet, after that, the film smartly rounds out these characters and makes each of the kids into a three-dimensional person I could care about. If the film has any suspense, it was not because the aliens were particularly threatening, but because I wanted to see all of the kids make it out alive.
I can't give Attack the Block a whole-hearted recommendation, but it is a pleasant enough time filler. And those kids were great.
What sets Attack the Block apart from its inspirations is its setting, an inner-city South London neighborhood. The action starts after a group of kids from the "block" hold up a young nurse whom, unbeknownst to them, also lives in their building. After the kids are attacked by an alien ("You got beat by Dobby!" one of the kids exclaims), they ultimately have to band together with the other youthful residents of the building to fend off the impending invasion.
So clearly plot is not one of the film's strong suits. Neither are the aliens. Unlike Super 8, there is no mystery surrounding the other-worldly beings. We see the aliens pretty early in the movie and from that point on, it's hard to imagine anyone getting really scared by them. The film clearly didn't have too much budget for special effects and so the aliens look something like a cross between critters, gorillas, and ink blots. Yet, the fact that aliens appear to have been animated and not created in a CGI studio does not entirely ruin the film. Instead of focusing on alien attacks, the script wisely sticks to the kids.
What makes any film worth watching are the characters. I have to admit that I liked these kids. They were funny and interesting enough to warrant a movie -- any movie. They could have put these kids in a ghost story, a hard-hitting drama, or a romantic comedy, and I would have just enjoyed watching them interact. To an extent, these roles were written as "ghetto" stereotypes. I was troubled that our introduction to these kids was a mugging of a white woman. The fact that one of the muggers was white did not make the underlying racism of the scene any less troubling. Yet, after that, the film smartly rounds out these characters and makes each of the kids into a three-dimensional person I could care about. If the film has any suspense, it was not because the aliens were particularly threatening, but because I wanted to see all of the kids make it out alive.
I can't give Attack the Block a whole-hearted recommendation, but it is a pleasant enough time filler. And those kids were great.
