The Fabelmans

The second movie in my double feature yesterday was The Fabelmans and I enjoyed Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical coming of age story about the power of movies but I didn't love it as much as everyone else seems to.  Young Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) is taken by his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) to see The Greatest Show on Earth and he becomes obsessed with recreating the train derailment at the end of the movie.  Burt is angry when Sammy crashes his expensive model trains but Mitzi suggests that he film the crash so he can watch it again and again without destroying his trains.  Thus begins his passion for filmmaking!  The teenage Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) regularly uses his sisters Reggie (Julia Butters), Natalie (Keeley Karsten), and Lisa (Sophia Kopera) as well as his boy scout troop to make elaborate movies.  Burt sees his movies as a hobby and Mitzi sees them as the artistic expression she was denied but, for Sammy, they provide a way to understand the tensions within his family and to deal with the prejudice he encounters at school.  Most people are raving about Williams (I think her performance is a little bit overdone) but I loved Judd Hirsch as Sammy's Uncle Boris because, even though it is short, the scene where he tells Sammy that he might need to choose between his family and his art is very powerful.  There is also a hilarious cameo by David Lynch at the end of the movie that leads to a perfect final shot (which made me laugh out loud).  I found the story to be very episodic and, while most of the episodes worked for me, some of them did not, particularly one with Sammy's girlfriend Monica (Chloe East) which is bizarre and seems irrelevant, and the narrative sometimes lacks focus.  My favorite scenes were those where Sammy shoots his elaborate movies because I kept seeing the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's future filmography but then I realized that Spielberg has made movies that explore the trauma of his formative years much better than this one does.  I didn't hate it but I am definitely in the minority on this one!