2002, PG-13, 140 minutes

If you think about it, it's sad how few truly fun and exciting movies there are these days, as most films tend to be heavy-handed dramas, gross-out comedies, or big action flicks with huge explosions and paper-thin characters. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg has delivered one of the most enjoyable motion pictures to come out in years, and just in time for Christmas. Catch Me If You Can may not be deep and won't bring tears to your eyes, but it certainly isn't shallow. With a great cast, careful direction, and a razor-sharp screenplay to work from, the result is a two-hour and twenty minute ride of a movie that proves sometimes real life can be better than fiction.

With the inexplicable backlash against Titanic in recent years, some people were actually beginning to question Leonardo DiCaprio's talent as an actor. This film should pretty much silence his critics, with a performance that works on a number of different levels and allows us to be genuinely concerned even while we're laughing or dropping a jaw in amazement at the character's sheer nerve. Assuming numerous identities and professions, in addition to forging fake checks all over the globe and wooing young women in his pilot's uniform, Frank Abagnale Jr. is the type of high-flying, gutsy individual you can't help but love, and DiCaprio was born to play the part. With his slender frame and young face, he is one of the few actors working today who can still be convincing as both an 18-year-old and someone approaching 30, and his sometimes smug demeanor makes him ideal as a James Bond-esque ladies man. He seems so natural in the role that I'm afraid he won't receive the recognition he deserves.

While the beginning of this movie starts out a little slower than I would have liked, once it gets moving it flies along at a fast pace and never stops, and also makes the detailed character introduction pay off more than I would have guessed. There are so many creative and amusing scenes that I can hardly think of them all, and what's best is it never insults our intelligence. As the story takes us through the process of how Frank learned to forge checks and come up with a number of other scams and identities, you have to pay close attention because there are none of those overly used voice-overs to explain what we can already see. The scenes between him and his father (Christopher Walken) are interesting but appropriately brief, while the other father-son relationship between Frank and FBI agent Hanratty (Tom Hanks) is what we really care about, leading to a troubling paradox in which we want them both to succeed. Abagnale's life is truly one of a kind and immensely entertaining, but the film works because it has a lot of heart, and - like the man it portrays - operates on more than just the surface.

What I liked best about Catch Me If You Can was how Frank understood deception at a fundamental level, realizing it's more about confidence and appearance than anything else. As his father tells him in his youth, the Yankees always win "because the other team can't stop staring at those pin-stripes." On the other hand, Steven Spielberg proves once again that he's the real deal and not some phony behind the camera, giving us not one but two of the year's best films.