THE FABELMANS
A brilliantly made coming-of-age drama with troubling ideas and harsh content.
Should You Watch It?
THE FABELMANS is exceptionally well-made. Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama is funny, intensely dramatic, and emotionally powerful. It explores family life, childhood fears, artistic vocation, and the power of movies to help people see themselves.
But the film’s excellence does not overcome its content and worldview problems. It presents “follow your heart” as guidance for both pursuing a career and leaving a marriage for someone else. It also gives viewers an imbalanced picture of Christianity through three overtly Christian teenagers, including two anti-Semitic bullies and a girl who treats Jesus as a romantic fantasy.
The movie contains 15 strong profanities, including one “f” word, as well as sexual immorality, violence, alcohol use, and marijuana use. Because the Family Content rating is −3, the practical answer is clear: skip it.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESYoung Sammy Fabelman becomes fascinated with filmmaking after seeing a frightening train-wreck scene in a movie. With encouragement from his mother and the help of his family, he begins creating films with his sisters, friends, and Boy Scouts troop.
As Sammy grows older, filmmaking becomes more than a hobby. But footage from a family camping trip reveals a painful secret, forcing Sammy to face difficult truths about his family, his future, and the stories movies can tell.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means this is a superb piece of filmmaking despite its serious moral and content problems. THE FABELMANS is brilliantly directed, funny, dramatically powerful, and intensely emotional. It also contains themes found in Spielberg’s other classic movies, including family life, emotionally distant fathers, and childhood fears.
The movie’s long 151-minute running time does not erase its strengths. Spielberg uses the story’s filmmaking theme to explore how movies can reveal people to themselves. The film’s artistic achievement is real, but it is not enough to make the movie acceptable.
The Worldview
THE FABELMANS promotes a strong Romantic worldview centered on “follow your heart.” The film applies that idea both to pursuing a filmmaking vocation and to leaving a husband and family for another person. Those choices are not morally equivalent: pursuing a God-given calling can be righteous, while abandoning marriage vows for romantic desire is selfish and wrong.
The film’s Christian representation is also deeply imbalanced. Its three overtly Christian characters are two anti-Semitic teenage bullies and a strange Christian girl who treats Jesus as a romantic fantasy. The review finds these scenes offensively anti-Christian and says they leave a bad taste in the movie’s second half.
The film’s longing for artistic purpose is strongest when it points toward vocation and the gifts a person may have been given. But human desire cannot be its own moral authority. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV)
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong Romantic worldview says “follow your heart” when it comes to choosing a career and when it comes to divorce your husband to be with another person you love more, which are equated to one another, and, in some overt Anti-Christian content, two of the three Christian characters in the movie are Anti-Semitic teenage bigots who misuse the name of Jesus and the third is a Christian girl who thinks of Jesus as a romantic, “sexy” fantasy, but there are also some light moral elements, a few of which are endearing and heartwarming
Foul Language
About 20 obscenities (including one “f” word), 15 strong profanities (about three Jesus profanities and 12 GD profanities) and eight light exclamatory profanities, plus mother buys a pet monkey and the youngest daughter tells her brother’s girlfriend that the monkey throws his “poop”
Violence
Teenage boys shoot a silent World War II movie where the teenage boys act like they’re getting shot, and there’s some fake blood exploding on their bodies, a movie scene shows a large circus train hitting a car on the railroad tracks and derailing, boy re-creates the scene with his electric train set, teenage boys shoot a silent western where teenage boys in western outfits shoot guns at one another, the “sheriff” in that movie takes care of the stagecoach “robbers” with his six guns, an Anti-Semitic teenage boy punches the Jewish teenage protagonist after the Jewish boy tells the boy’s girlfriend in public that he saw the boy kissing his ex-girlfriend (the protagonist’s nose is bloodied), there’s another scuffle later on with another Anti-Semitic teenage boy, but the other Anti-Semitic teenage boy punches the boy and stops him from beating up the protagonist
Sex
Scenes show that a married woman and mother has secretly fallen in love with her husband’s best friend, the mother and father eventually divorce, there’s a scene where a Christian teenage girl takes the Jewish teenage protagonist to her room where she has idealized pictures of Jesus and male celebrities on her wall and seduces the boy for a kiss while forcing him to pray to accept Jesus into his heart, and there’s a scene where the teenage protagonist sees one of his Anti-Semitic tormenters kissing his ex-girlfriend
Nudity
Upper male nudity in a beach sequence
Alcohol Use
Brief alcohol use, including by some high school students on a beach in 1963 or so
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
Man smokes a cigar, and an older teenage boy lights up a marijuana cigarette and takes a couple puffs before he exits stage left;
Miscellaneous Immorality
A caustic elderly uncle tells the young protagonist that family will tear you apart, and the pursuit of art will make him suffer, boy and his mother hides the mother’s romantic feelings for the father’s best friend from the father, and, when the parents finally decide to get a divorce, the father understands his wife’s “need” to be with the other man, but it clearly still pains him.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
What is the difference between pursuing a calling and using “follow your heart” to justify sin?
Jeremiah 17:9 · Ephesians 2:10Why do marriage vows matter when feelings change?
Matthew 19:4–6 · Hebrews 13:4How should Christians respond when people misuse Jesus’ name or associate Christianity with hatred?
Matthew 7:15–20 · John 13:34–35How can artistic gifts be used to tell the truth rather than hide it?
Exodus 31:1–5 · Ephesians 4:25The Final Word
THE FABELMANS is a brilliant, funny, and dramatically powerful film. But its strong Romantic worldview, anti-Christian depictions, profanity, and other serious content make it unsuitable for family viewing. Our answer is SKIP IT. For better options, see.
