I had not seen any reviews for this film, and had no idea that it was a loose biopic of Steven Spielberg. The movie was totally engaging from the very first scene and 2 hours 20 minutes went by in a flash. It could easily have been 3 hours plus and still kept me enthralled. The acting was superb, as was the direction and cinematography. The characters felt totally believable and richly developed. The movie itself has humour, pathos and great depth, It richly deserves it's Oscar nomination. I have now read a great number of the negative reviews and I can't believe they were watching the same movie. I can only assume that they thought that it would be more like Jaws or Raiders Of The Lost Ark. And as for the comments about it being too long, maybe their brains aren't able to cope with films longer than 85 minutes.