JP is still very pretty but is one of spielberg's most soulless movies.
My gut is because he quickly left to go do 'List after initial principal photography and George Lucas took over the project and oversaw all the post production including the effects work and worked on the editing.
If Spielberg took the time to work on JP and oversaw the entire film as a director and didn't throw the job to Lucas I think that spielberg "soul" may have been there.
Spielberg considers Lucas the second director on JP, maybe thats the problem.
he does that when he squeezes in too many films at a time, not everybody can handle Takashi Miike's workload.
and as for hollow, shite Spielberg films, my nomination goes to The Terminal, which was the most cloying and baldly manipulative film he's yet made (yeah, right up there with Always and the last act of A.I.). He might as well been holding up signs in the background that read "feel sad now", and "laugh at funny foreigner". The characters are all trite, shallow, and seemingly allergic to anything resembling real emotion. The sudden tonal shifts didn't help matters either.
I'm not opposed to farcical characters and situations, but if you're going to ask me to invest any feeling in them, they better dang well be worth caring about, not just a bunch funny accents with random quirky bits tossed in.
Its like the 80's Tom Hanks was trying to make a respectable film, forgetting all the progress he made over the last decade or so, but signed on with latter day Chris Columbus instead of Stevie.
I can't stand The Terminal.
