Directed by Steven Spielberg
Year: 2022
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 1.2/5 ★
Before Watching:
The pandemic hit everyone hard. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) pieced screengrabs from the FX team’s Zoom calls into the final cut, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise (2022) rehashed an old novel to delve into medical mortality, and even Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2022) built jokes around compulsory masking. Steven Spielberg’s 2022 pseudo-autobiography is yet another COVID-era creation, as he was evidently so bored in social distancing that he began pondering what stories he hadn’t yet told. Aliens phoning home, dinosaurs terrorizing Laura Dern, Ariana DeBose popping off… what could possibly be left? Ultimately, like Lin Manuel-Miranda casting Alexander, he settled for himself.
The Fabelmans is de facto inspired by Spielberg’s childhood and adolescence, chronicling his earliest exposures to filmmaking alongside seismic changes in his family life. The movie takes place from approximately 1952 to 1965, and manages to completely eschew the dozens of prominent historical events of that period. Did Spielberg live in such a bubble that his family never bothered flicking on the TV to learn about the March on Washington, the Kennedy assassination, or even the Vietnam War?1
In the opening scene, Spielberg’s child doppelgänger “Sammy Fabelman” attends a screening of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Young Sammy is struck by the visual effect of an on-screen train crash, so much so that he tries recreating it with his own toy set. This incites a voracious obsession with the magic of filmmaking, leading him to cast his sisters and friends in productions of his own. This passion is embraced by his mother Mitzi (a bafflingly manic Michelle Williams), while met with distaste from his father Burt (the greasiest Paul Dano you’ve ever seen). Otherwise talented actors, Williams and Dano deliver two of the worst performances of the 2022 festival circuit. Oh, and Seth Rogan makes an appearance as Burt’s pal Bennie, whose presence adds some… mild drama to the household. I never thought I would yearn for the simpler days of Seth Rogan’s crimes against cinema in The Interview (2014).
Spielberg has had an unequivocally stellar career, but this level of self-deification is worse than defecation. Sammy Fabelman is painted as an underappreciated and overlooked genius, overcoming obstacles to fight his way into showbusiness. The only problem is, well, he doesn’t really have that many obstacles to overcome. Outside of some moderate bullying and trite family squabbles (e.g., “my dad wants me to get a real job!”), he enjoys a relatively well-off life and essentially falls into his studio big break. Yeah, in terms of inspiration, it’s hardly Schindler’s List.
Aside from being masturbatory, The Fabelmans is also unbearably dull. All plot points are Disney Channel-level cliché, and the acting does little to prop up the one-dimensional characters. Still, if any American director can make a gaudy biopic, it’s Stephen—just please don’t mess with Indiana Jones 5.
After Watching:
Two points in particular stand out as horrendously overcooked. The first regards Michelle Williams. Frankly, every line she delivers is melodramatic beyond the point of intention, but her “fabled” character is rendered unbelievable by her cosmic connection to Bennie. It never quite works, but even if we suspend disbelief, it’s so obvious and obnoxious that the family would have realized sooner.
The second regards Sammy’s cartoonish high school bullies. They are ripped directly from a modern teen drama, as if Nickelodeon remade Victorious to be about antisemitism. The 180° turn that Logan takes after feeling glorified by Sammy’s directorial gaze is laughable, and their whole reconciliation scene is uncomfortable at best. It’s certainly a little ironic that Spielberg’s least believable sequence to date is the one he (purportedly) lived first-hand.
Sure, the acting is bad, but the film’s Achilles’ heel is ultimately its white bread screenplay. The writing fails to capture any impact, any gravitas, really anything to hook an audience (“Bore of the Worlds”). Sammy glides smoothly from problem to solution, from feast to famine, and the audience is shielded from any genuine conflict (for example, the period of him applying for studios after dropping out of college). A better version of this film was made by James Gray last year, it’s called Armageddon Time.
Does Spielberg know what he’s doing? Of course. The directing, the cinematography, the production design, and the mise en scène are all exquisite. He just needs to save us the spiel next time and find better writers.
Not to mention the conspicuous lack of people of color in Sammy Fabelman’s California.