I sat down to watch this film with some trepidation. Although Spielberg's films in the 70's and 80's are classic he is not one of my favourite directors from the time, his films are popcorn flicks and have little to say about society at the time they were made.

For a start this film is 60 minutes too long .. why do we have to see home movies being made and then watch them being shown in front of an audience??

The 2 daughters in the film have nothing to do and are superfluous ... why include them if they are only 2 dimensional.

Despite the fact that the film is set in the 1950's, this period seems more like the opening credits to "Blue Velvet" where all the characters are perfect and everything is perfect in suburbia ... that doesn't even do justice to the characterisation of Jewish characters which is hackneyed and feels very false (considering how much time and effort Spielberg has spent on collecting Jewish histories of the holocaust this feels really unacceptable!) Paul Dano is a great actor (see 12 Years a Slave) but in this film he is totally silenced ... we have no explanation of his actions despite the fact he is supposedly a early computer genius (doesn't feel true at all) Seth Rogen is miscast as a "friend" who seduces the mother of the family ... the scene where the eldest kid edits/spices together the evidence and unveils his mothers infedelity borders on the ridiculous and we never have any scene that explains either her inner feelings, or the reason she reacts as she does.

The love scenes between the central character and her first girlfriend not only feel false but insulting, a glib comment about circumcision doesn't help!

A really poor film from a great director and so sad to see how well it has been received by supposed professional film critics ... how can you justify the ratings based on how many fresh and important films presumably you watch daily?

Nothing cinematic about it ... if you still want to watch wait until it comes to Netflix and spend your money seeing something decent and cinematic at the cinema.