It is also being called one of the best films of the 2020s so far.
As we said in our review of The Fabelmans when it was released in cinemas in Ireland and the UK at the start of 2023:
“2021’s West Side Story, very good but also the biggest financial flop of Spielberg’s career. 2018’s Ready Player One, a technical feat that audiences were divided over. 2017’s The Post, great at the time but feels less interesting as the years pass. 2016’s The BFG, admit it, you completely forgot he’d done this movie.
“2015’s Bridge of Spies, has some great performances but never feels as thrilling as it should. And so we get to 2012’s Lincoln, the last time Spielberg released a film that this felt vital and powerful.”
That makes The Fabelmans the best Spielberg film in over a decade, telling the very personal story of a teenager Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle, basically a Spielberg stand-in), and his love of creativity and want to be a film-maker, and how that creates a splitting dynamic between his by-the-numbers dad (Paul Dano) and his more free-spirited mother (Michelle Williams).
The Fabelmans star Michelle Williams on working with Spielberg’s most personal movie
The movie turned out to be a bit of a financial flop (it made $45.6 million worldwide off a $40 million budget), but in the time since it has been released, The Fabelmans has been called both Spielberg’s most personal movie to date, as well as one of the best films of the 2020s:
Collider – “Spielberg has given us all so much magic over the course of our lives, and The Fabelmans becomes yet another Spielberg masterpiece, but this time, by showing us how this magic came to be in his own life. 10 out of 10.”
The Hollywood Reporter – “Immediately joining the first ranks of artists’ memoirs, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is both a vivid capturing of the auteur’s earliest flashes of filmmaking insight and a portrait, full of love yet unclouded by nostalgia, of the family that made him. 5 out of 5.”
ABC – “A personal best from Steven Spielberg about his own coming of age as a teen torn between his love for movies and family (Michelle Williams is incandescent as his troubled mom). You won’t forget this hilarious and heartfelt classic in the making. 10 out of 10.”
The Fabelmans is available to watch at home right now with a NOW Cinema Membership, or on Sky Cinema.
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