Oscars: ‘The Fabelmans’ Gets “Rare”Standing Ovation at Academy Screening

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fablemans” is finally getting released in select cities on Friday. That means we’ll be getting more reviews trickling in that could give us a better picture of its current Oscar frontrunner status.

Meanwhile, ‘Fabelmans’ just had its first screening in Los Angeles for Oscar voters. Obviously, it was a resounding success, the industry is going to eat this one up. Standing ovations at an Academy screening are rare, but that’s what the film got last night. The industry as a whole will eat this one up.

I recommend David Poland’s Substack column, “The Hot Button.” David’s been in the game for a few decades now, he knows how it all works. I presume he skipped TIFF this year as he’s late in catching up with “The Fabelmans.” Regardless, he wasn’t thoroughly impressed and, more or less, has the same problems with the film as I did. Although, I think I liked “The Fabelmans” a little more than he did. Poland writes …

I avoided reading about the film out of Toronto too much because I didn’t want to spoil it for myself. Now, I have looked at a few. And I see in many of those reviews what is now clear to me after seeing the film… it’s a very good movie with a number of compelling moments, but it’s no juggernaut.

That is not to say that it’s not going to end up winning Best Picture. It very well may. And in all seriousness, being knocked down a peg may be the best thing for the movie. It is still, no question, a nominee… and most likely the most nominated nominee.

Indie Wire's David Ehrlich also tweeted there's an inevitability factor with “The Fabelmans” winning the Oscar for Best Picture, and that’s really been the general mindset since Toronto.

“Everybody has to spend the next six months pretending it’s not a done deal because we all have jobs to do but the fabelmans is gonna win best picture.”

The truth about Spielberg’s ‘Fabelmans’ is that it’s filled with these indelible moments, but it’s also very on-the-nose and contains both the best and worst traits of his filmmaking career.

The one movie it most resembles is Woody Allen’s “Radio Days” in its gleefully naive look at how things used to be 50 years ago and in its nostalgic depiction of a medium that is somewhat “dying.”

‘Fabelmans’ is a deeply felt, but self-indulgent work on the part of Spielberg. Was his life story actually worth telling? If he wasn’t Steven Spielberg then this type of film wouldn’t be remotely as interesting. The drama is fairly inert and mostly composed of episodic highlights of his life. Judd Hirsch and David Lynch outright steal the show in time-capsule worthy cameos.

Michelle Williams and Paul Dano excel playing Spielberg’s quietly distanced parents. However, you can also tell that Spielberg omitted a lot of the darker moments he went through, he basically ducks at his parent’s inevitable divorce, and sugarcoats the anti-semitism he went through in high school.

There’s a very good reason why Universal has basically stopped screening the film ever since its TIFF world premiere. It couldn’t get much better than the reception it got in Toronto. There was no point in continuing to screen it elsewhere and run the risk of people realizing that it’s not a total slam dunk of a film.

The post-TIFF festival trajectory for ‘Fabelmans’ has been very low-key, consisting of three Euro events (Lyon, Rome and Thessaloniki Film Festivals). That’s it. It’ll also have its big US premiere at AFI tomorrow night, five days before it gets released stateside on Friday.

Fact of the matter is that Universal are campaigning Spielberg’s film like real pros. “The Fabelmans” was overpraised at TIFF due to Spielberg’s appearance, TIFF boss Cameron Bailey’s persistent push and the lack of any major world premieres on its itinerary. Yes, as Poland says, it’s a “good” film, but “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “TÁR,” “Aftersun,” and even “Glass Onion” were the superior fall festival films that I saw.