I don't know when I'll be back again...

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2004)

Steven Spielberg has never made a bad movie (and yes, that does include "1941"), but he has produced one or two - "Joe Versus The Volcano," which was one of the first times he and Tom Hanks appeared on the same credit roll. "The Terminal," along with being a change of pace from "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers," proves that they've come a long way from that leaden comedy and "The Money Pit" - but it's not a highpoint for either.
I'm not saying this is a loser; admittedly this movie does suffer from an inability to decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama - the scenes of Tom Hanks' Krakhosian traveler viewing civil unrest in his country on the airport's TV screens sit uneasily with his gathering luggage carts for cashback, for a start. Plus the situation he's in is treated quite seriously, notably with the official who's the closest "The Terminal" has to an actual villain - played by Stanley Tucci, in the movie's best performance as an official who's a nice guy one moment and determined to get Hanks out of the airport at whatever cost the next.
This inability to find a proper tone is partly Spielberg's fault - he seems afraid of being accused of being too sentimental this time around, although if ever a storyline could have done with more emotional pull (not so much in the relationship between Hanks and flight attendant Catherine Zeta Jones* as with the reason why he's in America in the first place) this is it - but screenwriters Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson deserve more of the blame, especially the latter (whose questionable storytelling abilities also hobbled "Speed 2: Cruise Control," "Rush Hour 2" and to an admittedly lesser extent "Catch Me If You Can"). A distressing amount of subplots never seem to have a proper buildup or payoff (like the catering guy in love with Zoe Saldana), and a lot of it is too fragmented to have an impact; the climax and finale just don't have the effect they should.
The shame of it is that this movie is often perfectly watchable - finely acted, amusing and touching, and well shot and scored by Janusz Kaminski and John Williams respectively (not to give anything away, but music plays a key role in the movie). DreamWorks built an entire airport lounge for the movie (most of which was shot in Montreal rather than New York), but the good news about "The Terminal" is that it's not the sort of movie where you leave whistling the scenery. The bad news about it, though, is that you don't leave with much about it on your mind - worth seeing, but nothing about it lingers the way, say, Jennifer Garner playing Go Fish with Leonardo DiCaprio in "Catch Me If You Can" does.
This would make a great inflight movie.
*And the end credits finally prove that there IS no hyphen in her name.