Magical Egotism is the current vogue in American non-franchise moviedom. Leading practitioners are David O. Russell, Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach....and now the old hit-maker Steven Spielberg proves himself a master of the genre. This blancmange of a film is redeemed in part by Michelle Williams' remarkable performance and an all-too-brief one by Judd Hirsch. Otherwise, it's tooth-rot.

Spielberg's great talent is for genre movies, so he should be on firm ground here. But the sad fact is that any time he touches anything even remotely serious, there is a whiff of fakery that, in some of his work, becomes a stench.

It's some irony that in this movie, his alter-ego Sam Fableman assesses his early attempt at an 8mm adventure as 'Fake!'. That is THE FABLEMANS.