Good clean fun but a missed opportunity

Rating: 7/10 (20 May 2020)

The Terminal comes mighty close to being a truly memorable movie but is let down by some unnecessary soppiness and directorial indulgence. Tom Hanks gives Navorski a rather childish persona that is somewhat cloying and arguably a little insulting. Hanks has enough charm to maintain Navorski's likeability but I really feel this was a missed opportunity in character development. The supposed romance between Hanks and Zeta-Jones is pretty farcical and doesn't play out well. The whole charade takes an unnacceptable amount of time and makes the movie laborious towards the end. This is still a very enjoyable wholesome film but it could have been so much more.