The Fabelmans (2022)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Gabriel LaBelle

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: I’ve been noticing a weird blowback against this movie since its release, and it’s worth a little bit of analysis before I get into my own feelings on it. Some of it is the natural knee jerk reaction—with a twist of schadenfreude—to a film from the once (and future?) king of the box office landing with a dull thud on its opening weekend. Then again, any media release is going to attract bad faith conservative grumblings, so it’s entirely possible that we’ll never again see a film which avoids the aforementioned blowback.

But do you want to hear why I think the movie rubs some people the wrong way? One might argue that the film’s story is far too episodic for a major American release. One might even argue that there is a degree of solipsism in Spielberg’s attempt to make himself the unassailable hero of one of his films. I don’t think any of that is the issue. I really think the issue is that nearly every cinephile labors—to varying levels of intensity—that given the right circumstances, they could have been Spielberg. That his ascendency to the highest order of popular culture was a product of circumstance or luck. The thing is, if this film has any degree of a sober view of who Sammy Fabelman (LaBelle)/Spielberg is, not one of has the ability to see through problems of filmmaking with such ingenious solutions. Not one of us loves movies so much that the only thing that will bring us comfort during times of extreme emotional strife is the clicking of an 8mm camera. Not one of us had any hope of becoming Spielberg.

Oddly enough, I find that comforting. I’ll do you one better: I have half a mind to go see the film again. Maybe we all should. I’m real worried about this Spielberg kid. If we don’t come out for his movies now, I’m not sure what will happen.

Paul (2011)

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman

Have I Seen It Before?: Certainly.

Did I like it?: It feels fundamentally unfair, but when Pegg and Frost headline a film, one can’t help but long for Edgar Wright to be at the helm of the film. They should be allowed to work on their own projects, right?

Also, I can’t help but feel that as Simon Pegg becomes more and more successful with mainstream audiences that his nerd credibility has also become diminished.

But to judge the film on its actual merits, and not some artificial sense of its context among other films…

To its credit, the special effects are pretty subtly great. Nearly ten years after the release, Paul (voiced by Rogen) remains a fairly believable CGI creature. That’s no small feat. Greg Mottola is fine as director, and the whole film works as an innocuous comedy. And yet, the whole film never quite launches past the orbit of other American films of the last fifteen years or so (call it the Apatow era, if that helps). It also trucks in dread “reference rumor,” that same style of writing that fueled “The Big Bang Theory” through 912 seasons. Here it is supposed to be enough that much of the film takes place at Sand Diego ComicCon, but the context of why we appreciate the things celebrated there isn’t quite there. Somebody like Edgar Wright would have made one of the best close encounter movies of all time, and it would be thoroughly amusing as something of an afterthought.

I guess I did manage to find a way to bring the specter of Edgar Wright back into this review. I guess I’m still irate that he was chased off of Ant-Man (2015) is all.

But, again, that doesn’t really talk about this film, does it? The script came from Simon Pegg (and Frost), who wrote those superlative Cornetto films, you’d think something would leak in, but it again, remains just a comedy. Had Pegg and Frost not been in the film at all, I probably wouldn’t be thinking along these lines at all.

Steve Jobs (2015)

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Hell, I’ve read the book it was (loosely) based on twice.

Did I Like It: It feels like my opinion about the film seems like a fait accompli dependent on the answer to two questions:

1)     How do I feel about Steve Jobs (Fassbender) and the company he created going into the film?

2)     How do I feel about the work of Aaron Sorkin?

The answer to the second question is I enthusiastically love Sorkin’s work. I have no problem with The Newsroom, and I even like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, if you manage to ignore the last five episodes or so. Even if he’s starting to repeat himself a little bit and has never quite been as sharp as he was before he sobered up, I watch anything he has written, and I suddenly want to work harder at everything I do. Some people have some track of music or a particular recording artist to get them pumped, I have Sorkin.

Here, he has constructed a film story that reflects the products made by its subjects. Splitting a basic three-act structure across three of Jobs’ product launches, it bobs and weaves through many of the idea introduced in the Walter Isaacson biography upon which it is based. It was the only way to fit the essence of the book and the man into the confined package of a prestige drama. Sure, it creates fictions throughout that narrative, and in a vain attempt to make Jobs a gentler soul end the film at an arbitrary point in its central relationship. These are the realities of the biopic, even when it’s difficult to call this a biopic when it barely glances at the pre-Macintosh Jobs and only hints at the things he will do in the last decade of his life.

Which brings us to an attempt to answer that first question I mentioned above. Steve Wozniak (Rogen) may be the tragic, doomed hero of the piece, imploring his old friend that he can be gifted and kind. For a moment—as I indicated above—that it artificially seems like the lout Jobs was throughout the film may have found that his heart grew two sizes just before the launch of the iMac, but the reality and the text indicates he remained prickly and often hard to deal with for the rest of his life. The man didn’t really change, and he didn’t really mellow, but that’s not what the film is about. To watch him terrorize his colleagues is entertaining in and of itself, but I’m not sure I would have wanted to know the man personally.

Then again, I am typing this review on an iMac, so what do I know? He was probably right.

The Green Hornet (2011)

Director: Michel Gondry

Cast: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz

Have I Seen it Before: I have a distinct memory of seeing the movie in theaters, but beyond noting that the only mildly interesting use of the 3D was during the end credits, I had next to no memory about the movie itself.

Did I Like It: That last thought ought to tell you something.

It’s odd, but at the same time intuitive in the way only film executives could come up with, that in the television landscape of the 1960s, Batman was played for laughs, while The Green Hornet was plated deathly serious. Fast forward 45 years are so and we are no deluged with deadly serious Bat-films, and so the makers of The Green Hornet decided to opt for counter-programming and re-introduce millionaire publisher Britt Reid to the populace by way of a Seth Rogen buddy comedy.

And that’s about all I—or from a quick Google search, most of the of the people associated with the making of the film—could say that’s interesting about it. Even if somehow Rogen and company worked under a studio that had any interest in making an R-rated comedy version of the film, but even then, Rogen would have been miscast. It feels almost as if the film were originally written for Rogen buddy James Franco to star as Reid, but he had enough sense to pass on anything more than a cameo.

Maybe a Hornet movie played for laughs was the wrong move to begin with. All I know is that I was maybe a third of the way through the film before I was wondering how I might find a way to watch the TV series. I’m pleased to report that they are all available on Youtube, in relatively okay quality bootleg versions. Go check them out. The first episode has the Hornet and Kato taking out a crook named Trump. It has real charm. A legitimate release of that would be something I’d be imminently interested in watching.