No return (was there ever a return to have??)

Rating: 1/10 (17 April 2018)

There is this constant hype regarding Spielberg's supposedly return to form, albeit a return to the 80's style fantasy sci-fi work. But this man has given more in movie making than this stuff (Color Purple, Saving Private Ryan).
But these movies are also about the ACTORS. Spielberg's stories are basic stuff. Nothing that isn't formulaic, but he directs in his way with a good cast at the helm which makes for a better movie experience than his input.
Which is one reason why I twitched and fretted and got annoyed so much throughout this film. The actors were so dull. The hero frets about her birthmark. The dull boy who solves the puzzles doesn't even go to school. How did he even read? Oh, that's right - there is no reading in this dystopia! Now that is dystopian (Ray Bradbury has better dystopian fables in his little pinky).
The ending was magnanimously tiresome. Trite, garbage and not even sentimental (which honestly would've been a tad better). The actors looked dulled and transfixed on ending their scenes because none of them were engaging. The Walking Dead extras would've been more interesting when they are dead than these actors.
So who's fault is that? Everyone's - casting, directing and producing. I have no doubt the book is good, but so was Schindler's Ark (which has since been retitled as List). So we can't blame the source.
What always seems to be the issue with people's romance is like having a body of a Ferrari but the engine is a lawnmower. We all have the tendency to overdramatise our desires in having something substantial, and I never thought Spielberg was able to deliver this. You've seen Jaws recently (and it is far better than this movie because of the actors)?
So what we are left with is an overindulgent unsatisying movie that really has no point nor any nostalgia for the ones who went through the western version of the 80s, or even let the younger generation get gravitas of what some things in pop culture were really like.
It must be like what it is as being presented to me as the 60's (ie, nothing of the sort). I wasn't alive then, so I get a very diluted second hand account.
Hell, without Michael J Fox, this movie was doomed to fail for me anyway. It's ALWAYS the acting in Spielberg films that succeed (Drew Barrymore was more engaging than the plastic alien).
Spielberg is not the auteur that some people want him to be (and he himself does not perceive this either). But it has to be said that when you see a movie like this, you'd even welcome a fake mechanical shark because at least it looked better than the cartoon we were shown throughout.
I feel like the whole world is kinda trapped in an arrested development. We need to have grown up stuff - that's what I liked as a kid (look at Warner Bros cartoons!!). With a movie like this it should've been grown up!!
P.S: I'm not giving spoilers away in this report, but I was so disappointed that the movie did for The Shining. Damn, I was with my 12 year old and I wanted him to see THAT film when he's older with me. Now,the best bits have really been shown in this Ready Player One. They really could've mentioned that before you watched it (ie: this movie contains The Shining spoilers....)