So I watched The Fablemans. Speilberg's autobiographical family drama whatever whatever. I went into it not knowing anything about it other than it was a fictionalized account of his childhood and that David Lynch cameoed as John Ford. I'd seen that scene on youtube, which caused me to think the movie was going to be better than it was. I was also surprised to see that Lynch cameo closed out the entire movie.
The Fablemans got good reviews, apparently. I could not tell you why. I couldn't even guess. The only halfway nice thing I could say about it is that it was slightly less self indulgent than it could have been. Everything about it was like a bad after school tv movie from the 1980s, from the mundane, workman-like way it was shot, to the awful film score (John WIlliams' worst ever, by far), the cloying melodrama, the episodic narritive structure that fails to tie together into anything, the abundance of tired movie cliches told badly, the utter predictability of everything at every point in the movie. This movie was shit. Pure shit. I haven't seen all of Speilberg's movies, but I've seen most, and this is easily the worst of the ones I've seen.
I can see why Speilberg would want his family's story recorded somehow for posterity or whatever, but this movie needed so much more work done on the script level. Just in terms of structure, if nothing else. I almost get mad thinking about it.
