When your first reaction upon finishing this movie, as mine was, is to wonder whether or not "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is available on Hulu or Criterion then you know The Great Man has fallen considerably short of communicating to you the sturm and drang of his childhood in Phoenix and wine country.

The problem, as with most of this director's work, is that there is too little sturm and fairly tepid drang. In other words, as the NY Times critic, Manohla Dargis, puts it, Steven Spielberg tends to "soften the edges" of his youth. And since satisfying drama is largely composed of rigid, as opposed to malleable, edges (i.e, not all conflicts are magically resolved) there is, to mix the metaphor, a too treacly center to this particular cinematic candy bar. And in addition to lugubriousness there is a lack of sharpness and pacing in the writing and direction. Scenes that should arouse one's pity either drag on too long and are repetitive, like the endless whining and breast beating that is meant to express Sam's sense of betrayal when he finds out his mom is having an affair with his dad's best friend, or scenes that fail to launch, such as the one with Sam's sister, whose relationship with her brother is relentlessly unexplored in Spielberg and Tony Kushner's screenplay, suddenly appearing to comfort her brother and, since we do not know her, failing to make much of an impact. And then there is this director's irksome flip side to his softening of the edges, namely overcompensation. This trait gives us the supremely dull spectacle of Judd Hirsch trying to impart gruff, tough, jokey wisdom and succeeding only in boring us to death as well as heavy handed anti semitism that makes Stanley Kramer look like Lubitsch.

About the only sequences that came to life for me and struck the proper balance between light and dark, soft and hard, are the ones involving film making. There are three of them. One is where Sam's mom (a too Oscar bait-y Michelle Williams) watches the camping trip film her son made wherein is revealed her infidelity. The other is Sam's film of his high school's senior ditch day wherein he reveals his need to "soften the edges". The third and for me most unforgettable is a lesson from The Master (AKA John Ford by way of David Lynch) about horizon lines and movie making and was the only time in this two and a half hour sentimental slog where I cried. But then again that's one more time than I shed tears for "Love Story". Give it a B minus.

PS...I haven't even gotten around to the giant hole in the screen that is Gabrielle LaBelle. If this bore gets a nomination of any kind, I'll scream. Softly, of course.