Overblown, bloated, with a completely insulting ending!

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2000)

SPOILER ALERT!!!
SPOILER ALERT!!!
This is the kind of moviemaking that makes you sad to be alive. Somewhere hidden inside this overblown Hollywood "DRAMA" is a lovely little film begging to be let go.
Zemeckis once again proves that he was at one point a minor director with major assets, and now he is a major director with rapidly diminishing assets.
The special effects are wonderful, the photography is good, but the cast reaches soooo desperately for dramatic intensity, it practically makes you cry.
Helen Hunt has captured the crown of "Queen of Unwarranted Pauses" in the Cinema Pantheon. Either she or her directors believe that simply keeping the camera on her while she purses her lips and widens her eyes is something akin to acting. It is not.
Tom Hanks, perhaps the luckiest actor in the history of film, (don't get me started on his TWO Oscars) does a fine job throughout the island portions of the film, but falls completely on his face in the God awful last half hour of the film.
Here comes the spoiler. Although anybody who has sat through the preview has seen it by now!! (nice marketing in Hollywood nowadays!!) Once he returns to the mainland and attempts to reconcile with Hunt's character, we are reminded how mediocre a film this truly is.
I continue to be shocked that Zemeckis would actually have Hanks "standing in the crossroads" of his life!! This kind of blatantly stupid visual metaphor, not only insults the audience's intelligence, but is simply laughable!
I would have been content with Hanks' travails on the island, clearly the most interesting and believable portions of this film. I can't help but wonder if this would have been a much better movie with less known actors, and at least half an hour less screentime.
This film aims squarely at the lowest intellect in the audience, and by that standard, it wins.
A sad waste of celluloid.