THE FABELMANS (B) is a handsome film about the Fabelman family who are a fictional vessel for Steven Spielberg to tell his own semi-autobiographical coming of age story. Co-written by Spielberg and frequent writing partner Tony Kushner, Steven's analogue is Sammy Fabelman. There seem to be two major goals here, convey how Sammy was captivated by cinema very early on in his life and re-live how he used to make home movies during his adolescent into young adulthood. The second goal is to display the disenchantment of growing up, learning that your parents are faulty human beings (divorce plays a huge role in the film) and the world is a mean place. The two strands drive the film and ultimately come together in a pretty satisfying way by the end. That would be my key phrase for the film "pretty satisfying." As one would expect, the cinematography is beautiful, thoughtful, and always contains a shot or two that surprises in its power (this seems to come to Spielberg naturally). The score, art direction, and acting are all good too. At the end of the day though, it was all a bit...well pedestrian to me. The "coming of age" genre is filled with strong entries and as much as I love Spielberg, his story isn't all that exciting in cinematic terms - it's pretty satisfying. With the knowledge we have now about the things Spielberg feels was vital in his development, 2002's Catch Me If You Can is probably the more fascinating and insightful vessel for Steven than we thought then.