Nothing special...

Rating: 3/10 (20 March 2005)

The premise sounded pretty bad, so I thought there must be something redeeming in this film to have attracted the likes of Spielberg, Hanks, Zeta-Jones, and Saldana... but apparently not.
The movie is utterly uninteresting and poorly written. The situations are so contrived that it's nearly impossible to buy into any of the attempts to convey deeper meaning. It leaves plot threads dangling all over the place and the underlying messages are confused at best. And it's not funny at all.
For a character-based film, it's shocking that none of the characters undergo any character evolution -- in the end everything is exactly the same as it was in the beginning, except that Hanks accomplishes his original goal. Whoop-ti-do. Under the tagline "life is waiting" you would expect more to come from the events within -- unexpected life changing events or deeply inspiring meaning. But you'd be wrong. There's none of that. If you try to get any deeper meaning out it, you've got to make it up yourself.
I think the most annoying thing is that it COULD have been done properly without changing much. The actors were solid, and there was enough plot to work with. But instead they botched it at every redeemable chance. All in all, it is just pointless to watch.
Signed, A Disappointed Film-Buff