2002 - CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, slick Hollywood

The problem with being Steven Spielberg is that he is always supposed to direct major masterpieces.  Catch Me If You Can, is not a masterpiece and will never be a masterpiece.  It is a very slick piece of Hollywood entertainment.

The film has big stars in the leading roles, Hanks and DiCaprio, it also has actors like Christopher Walken, Jennifer Garner, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye and sexless Amy Adams. The cinematography is Spielberg's go to guy these days Janusz Kaminski who shoots everything in a warm nostalgic glow maybe a little too nostalgic.  The art direction and production design is impressive, the film has a real authentic 1960's look to it.  John Williams composed a nice minimalist score for a change instead of the usual bombastic soundtrack that Spielberg seems to like in his films.

Catch Me If You Can is easy to watch, it has the smooth professional style of a filmmaker who really knows how to assemble a film.  Spielberg piles on his usual mush about the boy whose father didn't love him, a road he's gone down many times before in better films.  When  Catch Me If You Can is  over it doesn't seemed to have added up to much of anything very interesting or important.  

As usual with one of these "based on a true story" films the story is barely true.  For a smaller Spielberg film it's longer than it has any right to be.

141 minutes, screenplay by Jeff Nathanson.