New White Water Spielberg Film is Terminally Bad

Rating: 3/10 (14 June 2004)

I'll begin by saying what I yelled out at the end of the film, while some of the audience was applauding, 'I can't believe Spielberg made this load of crap.' Yes, you heard me right. Now, I'm a huge Spielberg fan. Minority Report was by far one of the best films of 2002, and I loved what he did with Kubrick's A.I., despite the cheesy Mission to Mars rip off of the aliens at the end.
But I thought there wasn't much to Catch Me If You Can. It was a fine film, well-made, but just not much too it, anyone could have made it. So I kind of went into The Terminal thinking it was going to be like that. I bought into the previews thinking, hey, this cheesy high-concept could work, if done right-a man without a country discovers America in JFK airport; it will be a satisfying film. And I'll even admit I've been humming 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' for the last couple weeks.
Boy was I wrong. The Terminal is an absolutely bogus Hollywood feature, aimed at pleasing the mass audience with dumb jokes, with a horrible script.
Even while writing this, I still can't believe Steven Spielberg directed this load of crap; what was he thinking? Is Spielberg turning into Ron Howard (Ransom, How the Grinch Stole Christmas), or even Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away), doing big budget films just to make money?
*****Spoilers From Here on*****
Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski who's stuck at JFK airport because there was a coup in his country. In the beginning, he's taken to Frank Dixon's (Stanley Tucci) office and is told he must not step foot outside the airport doors. The problem is, Viktor doesn't speak any English, and they don't speak his language. This is the first part that leads down a long slope of unbelievability.
I just can't believe they wouldn't have an interpreter at JFK airport. They wouldn't just let a man who doesn't speak English walk around the airport if they weren't sure he didn't understand what was going on. And if Spielberg is trying to criticize immigration into this country, he shouldn't be doing it in a comedic way, making a joke at the fact that Viktor doesn't know what is going on.
He tries to get into the bureaucracy of the immigration laws by showing how Dixon wants Viktor to take advantage of a loophole that would allow him to leave the airport, but Dixon's character is played so bogus, that it's just not believable.
And it really makes no sense why Viktor just doesn't leave. Is it because he just wants to follow the rules? Well later we learn he's learning how to break the rules, how to find the loophole, with the 'goat' incident. The 'goat' scene really makes no sense, because Dixon could just check and see if the medicine is for people or for animals. The whole motivation behind the scene is that he didn't want Viktor to show him up. And he just lets Viktor show him up.
Again, this is just poor writing. The writers felt they needed a bad guy in the movie, when they don't, and made Dixon out to be the stereotypical bad guy, instead of making him seem like a real person. No wonder this is so poorly written, because one of the screenwriters, Jeff Nathanson, wrote both Rush Hour 2 and Speed 2.
Dixon's anger at Viktor makes no sense. Dixon suddenly decides, that because he's angry at Viktor, he's now going to try and keep him at the airport forever. It's a stupid Hollywood device, the protagonist must have an antagonist, or you have no movie. No matter now stupid it plays out.
I'd like to invent a new phrase and call this film: White Water Spielberg. The Terminal is a scam, it's bogus, it's whitebread mass audience appeal, with watered down stereotypical clichéd plot and story.
A lot of the jokes are just plain dumb. Like the coins shooting out at him when he returns a bunch of pushcarts. They didn't shoot out before, just cause a bunch come out at a time doesn't mean they would fly out like that. It's this type of little detail that shows how much Spielberg has turned into the typical director hack sell-out. Stanley Kubrick, who Spielberg took over and directed A.I. after Kubrick's death, would never overlook such details.
The audience was eating up the dumb jokes though, so I guess when you want to make a movie that will have mass audience approval, you have to dumb down the script and write down to the audience. This is done all the time, just not in a movie directed by Spielberg, I expect more from him.
More little details ruin this film as well, like Viktor goes to Borders to buy travel guides on New York City to learn English when he has no money for food. Those travel guides, especially in an airport bookstore, are expensive, probably at least $10 a piece. And when they showed he could just barely afford a $0.75 burger at Burger King (which is also a false price by the way), how could he afford to buy the books. And later it's revealed the Head of Homeland Security Department at JFK makes less than $19 an hour. That's just under $40,000. I highly doubt that is possible.
The subplot with Diego Luna, from Y tu mamá también, is too sentimental, and stupid. It's just not believable that there would be a wedding in an airport, give me a break.
Finally the ending is tied up too nicely. Why would Dixon leave the others alone, once he finds everything out about them. Are you telling me the head of homeland security at JFK airport is going to let a known criminal, a criminal who assaulted a police officer, still work there, and not have him immediately arrested? Great, I feel safe traveling now.
The sentimentality over-kill comes in once more when we learn what Viktor has in his peanut can, and why he came to America. We never find out anything else about him, if he has a family back home, what his job is. But his reason for coming to the US is just plain dumb.
I am just dumbfounded that Spielberg made this film. I guess this is his Planet of the Apes, oh wait, no, that's going to be The War of the Worlds.