The Fabelmans: A Review - The Naked Truth Is That Emperor Spielberg Has No Clothes

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A terrible, self-indulgent, truly awful film that features poor performances, an abysmal script, and dreadful direction.

This past year has been a boon for self-indulgent film directors and a bane for movie audiences, as auteurs have shat out a bevy of sub-par autobiographical movies about their childhoods and the magic of cinema.

First there was Alejandro G. Inarritu’s atrocious Bardo, followed quickly by James Gray’s artistically anemic Armageddon Time, and then there was Sam Mendes’ universally panned Empire of Light (which, to be fair, is less blatantly autobiographical), and finally there is Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.

I’ve seen all of the above except for Empire of Light. What has been alarming is that each of these films I have seen has gotten progressively worse than the one I saw before it. Armageddon Time is shlocky, politically correct garbage, but Bardo is simply an astonishing cinematic atrocity. Bardo is supremely awful, but it’s at least visually and narratively ambitious if not audacious, which is in stark contrast to Spielberg’s newest flatulent film The Fabelmans.

The Fabelmans describes itself as a coming-of-age drama, co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, that chronicles aspiring filmmaker Sam Fabelman (a stand in for Spielberg), a precocious young man in love with moviemaking, as he navigates his childhood and teen years growing up with a scientific father, Burt, and an artistic mother, Mitzi.

The Fabelmans is easily the worst of the Spielberg’s late-stage movies, which is quite an accomplishment considering the garbage he’s churned out over the last twenty years or so. This film is, quite frankly, so bad as to be an utter embarrassment. I watched a screener of the movie with my wife and we laughed out loud numerous times AT the movie, but never with it. The movie is such an amateurish, after-school special level production that we literally stopped it on multiple occasions and turned to each other and asked “what the fuck?”

At one point in the film, aspiring director Sam Fabelman is watching the footage of a movie he’s shot with his Boy Scout troop, and he shakes his head and mutters to himself in disappointment, “Fake. Totally fake.” Too bad Spielberg didn’t have the same discerning eye at 76 that he did when he was 14 as The Fabelmans rings so egregiously phony that I actually pondered “how could Spielberg watch this and agree to release it?”

There are so many scenes and sequences in this movie that are simply mindboggling for how appallingly awful they are. Just when you think the worst scene is behind you a new cinematic and dramatic atrocity steps in to take its place.

There’s the dinner scene which is staged and acted like the worst high school play you’ve ever had the displeasure to endure. Then there’s the masturbatorial scenes where audiences of Boy Scouts and family are overly amazed to the point of ecstasy at Sam Fabelman’s “brilliant” movies that aren’t brilliant. And then there’s the ultimate cringe worthy scene where Mitzi Fabelman does her best Corky St. Clair “Penny for your Thoughts” from Waiting for Guffman imitation as she “dances” in a see-through nightgown in front of a campfire and car headlights while on a camping trip.

Then there’s the scene where Sam edits the footage of this camping trip and discovers a family “secret”, which is shot like it’s from a bad pre-teen show on Disney Channel. Then there’s the scene where family friend Benny gives a camera to Sam as a going away present, which is staged with all the grace of monkeys having a shit fight at the zoo. Then there’s the scenes of gay, neo-Nazi, Schindler’s List wannabe, anti-Semites who bully Sam in high school which all feel like they’re from the worst episode of Happy Days you’ve ever seen. And on and on and on.

There is literally only one scene in the entire film which crackles with any life or dynamism, and that’s the last scene of the movie. This exuberant scene only goes to remind how badly mismanaged the dismal and dull preceding two-hours and thirty-minutes truly were.

Spielberg has always been addled by his addiction to a saccharine sentimentality, and The Fabelmans is no exception, except here the sentimentality is, to reference another Christopher Guest movie, turned all the way up to 11. Unfortunately, this sentimentality has blinded Spielberg to the stark lack of craftsmanship across the board in this movie.

John Williams score and Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography are banal, underwhelming and shockingly second-rate. Tony Kushner’s (and Spielberg’s) script is so inelegant and so lacking in cohesiveness and humanity, as to be cinematic malpractice.

Speaking of cinematic malpractice, there’s a scene in the film where Judd Hirsch, who compellingly plays a sort of crazy-genius grand-uncle, is spewing contrived pieces of wisdom to young Sammy Fabelman, and yet throughout the scene you can see his mic pack bulging through his wife beater t-shirt. This is a $40 million movie, not some $1,200 student film…how the hell does that level of shoddiness make it to the screen?

The performances are just as abominable as the rest of the work on the film.

Michelle Williams is an actress I like, but her Mitzi, featuring a haircut from hell, is one of the most hollow, disingenuous and grating pieces of acting I’ve witnessed in recent years. Everything is so mannered and so contrived that it feels like watching a toddler ham it up in grandma’s clothes to entertain the family after rowdy Thanksgiving dinner.

Paul Dano is an actor I greatly admire, but his performance in The Fabelmans is so vacuous and devoid of any inner life or intention as to be remarkable. Dano is dead-eyed as he mechanically utters his lines like he’s auditioning for a job at either a wax museum or a mausoleum.

And just when you thought the acting couldn’t get any worse…Seth Rogan shows up. Good lord. Seth Rogan is to acting what a dirty diaper is to ambience.

On top of all the bad acting, every character is extremely unlikable (the same is true in Armageddon Time and Bardo…why are director’s families so repulsive?). Early in the film, Mitzi, for some incoherent reason, drives the family towards a tornado and all I could do was hope that they would all be thrown miles away and end up a red stain on the dashboard. Once that didn’t happen, I was left praying for a pack of coyotes to come along and maul them all in their sleep, or a gas leak or a septic tank explosion, to take them out and put me out of my misery.

There’s also a very strange and frankly very ugly strain of anti-Christian sentiment that rears its head about two thirds of the way through the film. I’m not someone who ever cares about this sort of thing but Spielberg goes out of his way to demean and belittle a Christian character in the movie, and explicitly mock her religion. The treatment of this girl and her Christianity is nasty and mean-spirited and totally out of place with the tone of the rest of the film. It’s the equivalent of what the gay Neo-Nazi anti-Semites do to the Sam Fabelman character when they call him ‘Bagelman’ and demand he apologize for killing Christ. In other words, it isn’t clever or insightful or amusing, it’s just vicious and small-minded. That Spielberg, who is allegedly a man of faith (he’s made quite a show of his connection to Judaism over the years), would demean, disparage and denigrate the lone character of a differing faith in his film and gleefully embrace this repellent but culturally acceptable prejudice, speaks volumes about his lack of character.

The Fabelmans has been a major box office flop, as it has only made $25 million against a $40 million budget. But Spielberg didn’t make this movie to make money, he made it to win an Oscar….and he might just succeed.

It's a testament to Spielberg’s iron grip on Hollywood that this movie, this dreadful, no-good, really bad movie, is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress (Michelle Williams) and Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch).

Spielberg’s power over Hollywood and the lack of intellectual integrity among critics, also accounts for why the movie is adored by most critics (92% critical score Rotten Tomatoes). But don’t be fooled by the vacuous opinions of these sycophants and philistines.

The reality is that the once great Emperor Spielberg, who gave us cinematic marvels like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can, has no clothes.

The naked truth for all to see but few will admit, is that The Fabelmans is an embarrassing and humiliating failure of a film. To claim otherwise is either dishonest, delusional, or both.

©2023

Hamilton: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!1 THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Recommendation: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Might be worth seeing just to get it out of your system, but truly, it is not worth the two hours and forty minutes.

Hamilton, written by Lin Manuel Miranda and directed by Thomas Kail, is a live recording of a 2016 performance of the stage musical of the same name. The show tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s founding fathers, and stars Lin Manuel Miranda in the lead role, with supporting turns from Leslie Odom Jr., Renee Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Daveed Diggs and Jonathon Groff among many others.

Hamilton hit Broadway back in 2015 and was met with universal adoration, which included eleven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Original Score and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The mainstream media fawned all over the show and deified its creator and star, Lin Manuel Miranda, to a striking degree…he even won a MacArthur Grant for his alleged genius. Similar to Rent, which debuted twenty years before it, Hamilton became an unabashed pop culture phenomenon and was the hottest, and priciest, ticket in any town in which it appeared.

I think the slavish adoration of Hamilton (and Miranda) by the media was a function of their aggressive affection for President Obama…as the show, with its diverse cast and devout optimism in America and its ideals, is a sort of a theatrical manifestation of Obama-ism.

The establishment’s instantaneous exalting of Hamilton was stunning to behold and raised very serious propaganda red flags for me. For that reason, and the fact that tickets were exorbitantly expensive and exclusive, I have never seen the musical on stage.

I was curious to check Hamilton out though when, thanks to Mickey Mouse shelling out a record $75 million to Mr. Miranda for the privilege of showing his work, it premiered on the Disney Plus streaming service.

In my appraisal of the show, let’s start with the good first.

Among the cast the highlights begin with Tony winner Renee Elyse Goldsberry…who absolutely crushes her songs with a vocal dexterity, ferocity and power. Even though she plays Angelica Schuyler, a somewhat secondary character in the bigger picture of things, Ms. Goldsberry is the beating, and at times bleeding, heart of the show.

Tony winner Daveed Diggs plays Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson and delivers with a palpable charisma, comedic sense and charm that lights up the stage whenever he’s on it.

Okieriete Onaodowan plays Hercules Mulligan and James Madison and brings a subtly powerful presence and striking rap style to his role, which could easily have been lost in the shuffle in the hands of a lesser actor.

Christopher Jackson’s robust voice and dramatic skills animate the role of George Washington and in the second half he nearly steals the whole damn show.

And finally, Jonathon Groff actually does steal the show in the minimal role of King George. Groff may very well be the best singer in this ridiculously talented bunch, and he belts out his songs “You’ll Be Back/What Comes Next?I Know Him” with such a delirious vigor and aplomb that it is simply intoxicating. (Groff is also excellent in Netflix’s Mindhunter!)

Now for the bad news.

By far the biggest problem with Hamilton is that the show is populated by a plethora of very talented people…but its lead, Lin Manuel Miranda, is definitely not one of them.

A musical simply cannot be worthwhile if its lead is uncharismatic, a dreadful singer, an embarrassment as a rapper and a truly atrocious actor.

I cannot tell you how shocking it was for me to behold Miranda’s severe limitations as a performer after having heard for four straight years that he was a once-in-a-generation genius. Miranda really is a stark naked emperor and it seems no one wants to admit that obvious but uncomfortable truth.

Let’s start with his singing. It is always going to be a problem when the lead of a musical can’t sing, and so it is with Miranda and Hamilton. Miranda has an extremely limited vocal range, and his voice is…and I am being extremely generous here…weak and pedestrian. The fact that Miranda is surrounded by a cast of ridiculously talented singers only accentuates his vocal impotence.

Hamilton’s big claim to fame is that it is, in its own way, a hip-hop musical, so maybe you’d think Miranda’s numerous short comings as a singer wouldn’t be that big of a deal…you’d be dead wrong. Miranda’s rapping is, unbelievably, even worse than his singing. Miranda raps with a whiny, nasally voice and comes across like a nerdy history teacher trying to be “hip” for the young people in his classroom. Watching him rap is like watching a grandparent dirty dance at a wedding…it is just a viscerally uncomfortable embarrassment.

Add to this the fact that Alexander Hamilton is supposed to be this dude that the ladies adore, and yet he is played by the ultra-anti-masculine, doughy dullard Miranda. Whenever one of the female characters are professing their love or attraction for Hamilton it made me cringe.

The funniest thing of all was in the second half of the play watching Miranda try and cover his really abysmal singing by pretending to act. Miranda repeatedly forced a fake cry in order to disguise the glaring weakness of his flaccid voice. What made this so amusing is that Miranda is just a staggeringly terrible actor…I mean he is pulling some junior high school drama class level stuff on stage.

I couldn’t help but think of Christopher Guest’s fantastic 1996 comedy Waiting for Guffman while watching Hamilton. In that film the brilliant Christopher Guest plays Corky St. Clair…the writer/director and eventual star of a play he puts on in Blaine, Missouri.

Go watch Waiting for Guffman to see Corky’s dance moves, and his stunning duet, A Penny For Your Thoughts, and you’ll see Lin Manuel Miranda in Hamilton in a nutshell.

Despite Corky being hysterically untalented, he is still adored by the rural rubes who don’t know any better. Lin Manuel Miranda is the Corky St. Clair of Broadway.

Of course, the media, like the know-nothings in Blaine, give Miranda a pass for his weakness as a performer because they think he is some sort of musical theatre genius. I obviously disagree. But even if that is true, the bigger problem to me is that the only reason Miranda stars in the play is due to his obviously over-sized ego. Even Miranda fans must admit that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of Broadway performers who could do a better job in Hamilton than he did. Hell there are a handful in this actual production who could do the part better than him…like Leslie Odom Jr.…or Daveed Diggs…or Anthony Ramos…or Christopher Jackson and on and on.

Also, in terms of Miranda’s ego…Steven Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Weber didn’t star in their musicals…so what kind of ego must Miranda have to think he needs to star in his, especially when he lacks the requisite skills to pull it off?

In regards to the music in the show…well…there is not a single memorable song to be found in Hamilton despite the fact that there are numerous performers giving memorable renditions of the material. Not one. Part of that, but not all of it, can be written off to the use of rap, which is an art form that generally does not age even remotely well. (Here is another comedy that I thought of while watching Hamilton - The Simpsons Planet of the Apes Musical, which uses rap music about as effectively as Hamilton…so Lin Manuel Miranda is both Corky St. Clair AND Troy McClure!)

As for Miranda’s creative genius…I don’t get it. I mean, I guess it is clever to adapt Ron Chernow’s book Alexander Hamilton into a musical…but it feels like he just put history to rhymes. Does that rise to the level of amazing? Count me unimpressed.

So basically, everything wrong with Hamilton falls on Miranda’s shoulders and boils down to an egotistical, self-reverential and underwhelming songwriter trying to carry a pop-music/rap musical despite being an insipid and abysmal performer.

But besides that…how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? (See I can use historical references too! Where’s my MacArthur Grant!)

Hamilton has been praised for its color conscious casting…in other words, its decision to cast of actors of color in the roles of white people of history. This is obviously a grand symbolic gesture…but of what? Diversity? Sure. Inclusion? Ok. But this soft gesture of inclusion and diversity, which won over rich, white, Obama-ite neo-liberals, also has a shadow to it, as the only white actors with prominent roles in the show play the villains, King George and the cowardly and incompetent Charles Lee. Both King George and Lee aren’t just villainous, but also clownishly effeminate…much in contrast to the actors of color surrounding them who are robustly masculine. One can’t help but conclude from the evidence presented that Hamilton is not only pro-diversity and inclusion, but insidiously anti-white, particularly anti-white masculinity (not to mention that no white woman at all appears in any roles but the ensemble).

Hamilton has not aged well in its five years of existence, and as previously mentioned that could be a function of using rap and popular music as its backbone. This is heightened by the fact that even politically the show has gone from darling to doubted among the media, which now has seconds thoughts about Hamilton, which is likely a result of the media’s succumbing to the cult of wokeism.

You see, it is difficult to cheer the tearing down of statues of Washington and Jefferson for being slave owners, and then celebrate them in a musical even if they are played by black actors. In this way, Hamilton is, like Obama himself, painfully outdated for the era of rabid social justice and, ironically, Black Lives Matter.

Also outdated is the notion of celebrating the founding fathers and their accomplishments which include quaint ideas such as freedom of speech, which were radical in their day and have, incredibly, become radical once again in our own. In the era of cancel culture, BLM and SJW’s, free speech is anathema, and the founding fathers are criminals to be posthumously punished, not heroes to be celebrated and humanized.

After sitting through the seemingly endless two hour and forty minute run time my conclusion is this…I found Hamilton to be little more than Sesame Street social studies for rich, self-loathing white neo-liberals who want to bask in the warmth of their own self-righteousness and self-deluded coolness. It is a sterile, vanilla, Disney-fied piece of dramatic preening that poses at intellectual depth but is as shallow as a kiddie pool.

In terms of its cinematic worthiness, the staging of the play does seem impressive in a sort of “wow the drama club did a really nice job this year” sort of way, but it, like nearly every stageplay ever photographed, does not translate well to film.

The bottom line is this, I am glad I finally got see Hamilton if for no other reason than I now know I do not need to see Hamilton. I am also glad that I never got suckered into the Hamilton hype and got fleeced for a ticket, and instead only had to pay $4.99 for my Disney Plus subscription to find out that the show is a glittering piece of musical theatre fool’s gold. For all the folks who fell for its alleged, in the moment, 2016 charms…the joke is on them, as history once again has the last laugh.

©2020