The Post

So this is what you get when an "eat your vegetables" story meets the most entertainment and emotion oriented of all movie directors. Everything in this story about the publication of the Pentagon Papers is Important with a capital 'I'--freedom of the press, checks and balances, lives on the line, etc.--but it never quite feels that way as these proceedings proceed. The storytelling is a little too paint-by-numbers; you can almost see the "CIVICS LESSON" stamp on the script pages, where certain lines are delivered less as acting and too much like an essay reading. And the efforts to build drama fail; true, we all already know (or, accounting for ignorance, should already know) the outcome of these events, but that's rarely a hurdle in the hands of a skillful storyteller. (Think Apollo 13; we knew going in they survived, but it was still a dramatic ride nevertheless.) Spielberg is not a poor storyteller, but something in the execution here is amiss, and it can't be laid upon the actors, who all acquit themselves well. Just as a salad is hardly exciting, but something you need to eat once in a while, this film is worth seeing, if only for the refresher in history--but it's not a particularly inspired piece of movie-making.