MEDIOCRE NEW MOVIE: THE FABLEMANS

Father and son: Paul Dano and Gabriel LaBelle

THE FABLEMANS (2022). Director: Steven Spielberg. 

In 1952 young Sammy Fableman (Mateo Zoryan) lives in Arizona with his sisters, mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams of Shutter Island) and father Burt (Paul Dano of The Batman). Practically living with them is "Uncle" Bennie (Seth Rogan), who is Burt's best friend. As Sammy becomes a teen (Gabriel LaBelle), he makes amateur films with his boy scout troop that impress and excite his family and the townspeople. Footage of a camping trip that his father asks him to put together also reveals a disturbing secret. Apparently Mitzi and Bennie are in love. Sammy has to deal with this, his emerging hormones, anti-Semitism at school after he moves, and his first love affair with a girl named Monica (Chloe East). 

Mitzi sees the footage shot of her and "Uncle" Bennie

The Fablemans is based on Spielberg's own childhood, and while his parents did divorce, I don't know how much of the triangle situation with "Uncle" Bennie is fact or faction. Frankly, it's the only halfway dramatic development in this film that I confess I found rather boring at times. I also confess that despite some good movies and box office successes (along with a few bombs), I was never that carried away with the semi-literate Spielberg or thought he was really in the front rank of filmmakers. (Two of his films that I think are especially good, however, are The War of the Worlds and Duel.)  

Little Sammy (Mateo Zoryan) and his train set

The Fablemans is perhaps supposed to be some kind of love valentine to the movies, but in that case I wish Spielberg had made a masterpiece, which this isn't. The acting is excellent -- Judd Hirsch enlivens the movie for the few minutes he's on-screen --  which is why you probably keep watching even when things get slow. Without a word of dialogue Michelle Williams is wonderful as she watches the footage of her and Bennie that Sammy excised from his video about the camping trip and explains why he has been so angry with her. It's a wonderful sequence, but there aren't enough of them in this movie. (All the high school business of bullying and young love has been seen a thousand times before and been done better besides.) As in most modern films, The Fablemans is so scared of being a soap opera that it minimizes the drama -- I mean this whole triangle situation, while it may be a trifle cliched, is rather explosive, but this only simmers without ever coming to a boil.

In the screenplay co-writers Spielberg and the equally over-rated Tony Kushner try to come up with powerful scenes, but they seem much too contrived, such as when a high school bully (a talented fellow named Sam Rechner) who appears in Sammy's movie breaks down and cries. Subtlety is all well and good -- if that is even what it is -- but the movie fails to really confront issues, it just meanders along until a silly conclusion when Sammy meets director John Ford. Then it's over. Ho hum. 

Verdict: We'll have to wait for an unlikely sequel -- this was not a box office hit -- to see the more interesting moments in Spielberg's career. **1/2.