Steven Spielberg's biographical pic has received generally good notices, none of which I read before seeing it recently. It's good but there are a few points I'll raise with respect to its overall impact. After reviewing his lengthy bio in Wikipedia, it appears that the film tracks his real life closely. There were changes but none of any great significance.
Parents are played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who are excellent. Williams is a superb actress but at times I wasn't entirely sure about where her character was coming from or going. Mainly, this was likely due to her being a free spirit, married to a computer engineer who is on a path to ultimate success in Silicon Valley. She is the main character, along with Gabriel LaBelle as Spielberg from his young adult stage onward. I guess in the end she wasn't easy to understand. Maybe that's my fault.
There are several great cameos: Judd Hirsch is the best as Steven's eccentric granduncle, but Jeannie Berlin returns as an aged grandmom or aunt, and famed director David Lynch ("Twin Peaks", "Blue Velvet") comes on as aged legendary director John Ford near the end.
As would probably be true with any teen, Steven suffers from the moves from New Jersey to Phoenix to California (Saratoga, I think). At the last stop, he winds up in an All-American high school that doesn't include Americans like him. They also omitted the first place on his itinerary: the Bronx. He dates a girl imbued with Christianity and is plunged into a world of blond school heroes of both sexes, for whom he is an object of scorn.
The picture appears to be about his family--including his three sisters--but it does understandably focus on him. It probably ran about an hour or so too long at 2 hrs 31 min. Spielberg co-authored the screenplay with playwright Tony Kushner and it's also decent. In the end, for whatever reasons specified above, the whole just came up a bit short for me.
