Low expectations sunk even lower and....

Rating: 3/10 (20 January 2006)

let me count the ways.
Continuity issues = I lost track, suitcase dropped on up escalator with all kinds of passengers surrounding it arrives at top with no passengers at all, wineglass levels, clothing, hair lines, visible doubles doing stunts, lights and cameras reflected off everything. And ninety eight more such piffles all gifted to the dim-bulb viewer by no less than Steven Spielberg who should crawl away in shame at having directed this travesty of a movie. Right up there on my Worst List of all time.
Tom Hanks with an atrocious accent plus the added insult of losing and finding his Russki type English every sentence.
But the plot takes all the raspberries. There was a plot. Something like this: non English speaking alien befriends one hundred people in airport who become his family, his fiancée, his employer, his chef and even an old Indian becomes, wait for it, his clown!! But hold hard here: we have the Hollywood bad guy in the shape of a customs officer/security police, whatever, who is evil incarnate and makes the guy's life hell on earth. See there's nothing else to do in a busy airport but persecute one man. All day. Every day.
But don't forget the 100 friends and the by now ex-fiancée who bail our little bubble head out. Tom looks exhausted all through it, maybe he realized it could kill his career, hard to tell. Catherine slums around as a flight attendant who only gets home once a month (yeah, right)and reads Napoleon biographies for fun (yeah, right).
We should all get our money back twice for having to sit through this appalling mess. The double indemnity clause.
And BTW when does a country have the same name as its major city??
And just about every product on the planet was dropped in and promoted in this living hell.
I'll stop now, I need to get a life outside this bilge I've just watched.
3 out of 10, for the set design only. Outstanding.