In his 1984 review of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the venerable American critic Dave Kehr memorably dismissed Steven Spielberg's rollercoaster hit as betraying "no human impulse higher than that of a 10-year-old boy trying to gross out his baby sister by dangling a dead worm in her face".
The remark was typical of the critical sentiment toward a director then seen as shamelessly, even ruinously populist, but such disdain aside – with all due respect, Dave, if there's a higher human calling, I've yet to encounter it – he did have a point.
In The Fabelmans, Spielberg's warm, witty, and wonderfully moving new film à clef, we meet that kid, spooking his little sisters with a spring-loaded skeleton, splattering them with fake blood and wrapping them in toilet-roll mummy bandages, and watching with delight as a well-placed licorice spider causes chaos at family dinner.
