The Fabelmans (2022) Review

"When the horizon's at the bottom, it's interesting. When the horizon's at the top, it's interesting. When the horizon's in the middle, it's boring as shit. Now, good luck to you. And get the fuck out of my office!"

Surprising amounts of bite at almost every turn, given how soft and shmaltzy a film with this outline could have been. There's a little bit of "the magic of the pict-chuhs" sprinkled in there to balance everything out, of course, and it's great to see the Spielberg stand-in busting his ass on the old-school analogue tech, with every step up in camera and editing tech letting him refine his craft a little further.

But only a little bit. Most of the movie is the not always cold, but nearly always bittersweet, spikes of Spielberg's lightly fictionalized rendering of his childhood. But just because the material is tough, doesn't mean it's a drag to watch. The child actors are- improbably- nearly all great, David Lynch strolls in for one of the best cameos of all time, and Judd Hirsch sinks his teeth deep into his five minutes of screen time.