Steven Speilberg has now proved time and time again that he is one of the great movie directors of all time. Fabelman’s, directed by him and co-written with Tony Kushner (the amazing play Angels In America), is a warm movie, at times beautiful and touching. Still, it will not be a sparkling jewel in his rich legacy.

Maria and I went to see the movie tonight in our favorite funky movie theater in Bennington, Vt.

The movie was inspired by Speilberg’s mother, Leah, who left the family when Spielberg was 21 to be with another man. His mother always supported his movie-making.

Before she died, she agreed to Spielberg making a movie about her life (part one) and about the struggle between people who chose making art instead of the normalcy and security almost every parent and spouse wants them to choose.

The movie is wonderfully acted, especially by Michele Williams, who plays his tortured mother, Mitzi, Seth Rogan, who plays Bennie,  the family friend who loves her and who she loves in return; and Paul Dano, who plays his computer engineer father, who sees his son’s love for movies as a fad and frivolous choice.

Two actors played young Sammy, the Speilberg prototype.

The movie really belongs to Williams.

The Fabelmans is touching and, at times, entertaining, but I thought it was too long by half-hour or more. Judd Hirsch played Sammy’s Uncle Boris, whose schmaltzy Yiddish persona was ridiculous almost to the point of insult.

I left the theater feeling flat. At times, it was just plain boring.

Anti-semitism and Jewishness (part two) was a recurring theme in the movie; I find them confusing and largely irrelevant and distracting.  The Jewish stereotypes were heavy-handed and annoying.

I kept waiting for Sam to start making bigger, better, and more sophisticated movies. But at the movie’s most critical movement, he gave up making any.

This thread has almost nothing to do with Sam’s love of film-making or, as far as we know, Spielberg’s. If it was relevant, nobody explained why.

The film was pockmarked with take-offs from John Ford movies, we find out why at the end. There were a lot of heavy-handed scenes, surprising in a movie made by Spielberg.

Sammy’s geeky and somewhat clueless father moves the family to Northern California from the Southwest in his junior year of high school. Nobody in the family wants to go, and Mitzi is crushed by having to leave Bennie.

The family begins to implode.

At his new school, he is haunted and beaten (of course) by some  anti-semitic California stupid golden boys who taunt him for being Jewish and label him “Bagel-Man.”

Sam struggles with his movie-making as it becomes unwittingly entwined with the collapse of his family – something signaled almost from the opening scene.

I can’t say it was a great movie – Queen and Clint Eastwood have it all over Spielberg when it comes to memoirs or homage films – but it was entertaining and touching at times, safe for children of any age,  sweet and evocative every now and then. Yet it left me flat.

Two hours after watching it, I knew I had to write this mini-review quickly since I already forget what most of the plotline was about.

I’m still not sure what the story’s point is other than to permit Spielberg to honor himself.

The one line I could follow was familiar: story of one brilliant and driven Jewish oddball who worked to the top of Hollywood.