Owning David Fincher by having a dad who had screenplays produced during his lifetime - although I find it tough to believe Papa Jack’s original script wasn’t touched up in the years between his death and the start of production (this is a fake news movie, and not in the “F For” way - I know how Hearst was, but you can’t convince me this isn’t deliberately and winkingly topical), but that’s neither here nor there.

For the first half hour or so I was charmed by the clunkiness and boundless number of bad decisions on display - so many weird, misguided attempts to bridge modernity with the past, poisoning basically every corner of the production. Why use the pinnacle of late 2010’s A/V technology to attempt to replicate the 40’s? And if you’re doing that, why film in widescreen? Why hire Reznor/Ross while limiting them to a sound palette precisely opposed to their strengths? I was having a good time trying to figure the answers to these questions out (mostly landed on “Dave’s a bit of a dummy”), until I wasn’t, until I really wasn’t, at which point me and my family checked the time stamp and all groaned “jeeeeeesus” in unison when we realized we had 45 minutes to go. As for the Welles slander... a friend pointed out that there are few better ways to honor the man than talking shit about him, and I’m inclined to agree, so I was a little bit disappointed that this wasn’t more egregious towards him. I gotta give Fincher some props for taking corporate money and making his dad’s broad historical comedy (despite being a director uniquely poorly suited for this sort of broadness and this sort of comedy) with a series of baffling creative choices that don’t pay off, I think it’s cute, but I struggle to see much in this beyond surface level curiousity.