Not as disappointing as "Big Fish", but still kind of a let-down.

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2004)

"The Terminal" is the second highly anticipated movie this year by a big name director that, halfway through, had me sighing in disappointment.
The first was Tim Burton's "Big Fish", a movie so contrived and lifeless it made me wonder what happened to the wonder kind who gave us Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice.
The Terminal wasn't AS bad, and, in fact, has some really great moments only a director like Spielberg and an actor like Tom Hanks could deliver. There's a sequence in the beginning where Navorski discovers his home country has fallen into warfare and disarray, and desperately, fearfully runs around the Terminal looking for television sets that broadcast some snippet of news he's unable to understand anyway. This is a heartbreaking scene and I noticed I was sobbing only 15 minutes into the movie. This was a glorious setup that had me expecting a truthful, emotional, and brilliant Spielbergian parable on the hardships of immigration and the response they get from the country to strive so hard to come to. Granted, Navorski wasn't an immigrant, he was just a tourist, the obvious story to be told was about East meets West.
Instead, my blood started to chill and my shoulders sagged in my seat as the film fell victim to one cliché, forced Hollywood contrivance after another. Yes, Gupta the Janitor was funny but his dialogue was dismal (do you have an appointment? -not funny. a writers device trying to be "eccentric".)
The relationship Navorski develops with the airport workers was comic and touching on some levels (Chi McBride was brilliant as always and it was nice to see Diego Luna in a non sleazy role for once.) But their characters lacked any sense of realism or depth. The romance between Diego and the Customs Official girl could have been really sweet and compelling had the devices used to move it along (like Diego's bribing Navorski and the whole "he said/she said back and forth) not felt like the screenwriter was borrowing from the stock bin of Hollywood romances. There was no real sense of a crush or distant love from Luna's character and because of that, it lacked truth. And therefore, why should I bother caring?
That's how I felt about a lot of the movie. Catherine Zeta-Jones' character was so self centered and despicable in her devotion to a man she KNOWS is going to hurt her that I rolled my eyes every time she came on screen. Yeah, I get it. She reads history books (writer's device) she rambles on about Napleon (writer's device) and she's so hectic and neurotic in her life that she asks strange foreigners she's never met if they'd like to have dinner (writer's device.) I love Catherine Zeta-Jones and I know she's an amazing actress but her character was a complete fabrication from start to finish. The one, ONE touching moment between her and Hanks comes when he explains to her what's in the Planters can and more so why he came to this country. The acting she does without saying any words was the only other moment in this film where I almost cried, and yet it falls short because neither the setup nor the payoff of the relationship between her and Navorski are fulfilling or honest in any way, shape, or form. (Although, to be fair, their "date" on the patio with Gupta juggling the hoops was sheer comic brilliance)
The world of Independent Film has changed my view of movies so profoundly that it's hard, really hard, to watch a Hollywood movie now and not find myself giggling or sighing at the abundance of recycled clichés and untruthful characters. I understand that most of these big studio pictures are produced for one reason: to entertain the majority of the populous, most of whom don't see past the stereotypes and are easily amused, and let them leave the theater feeling good about life. And you know what, that's cool. Everyone deserves to have a good time at the movies. But when that "good time" is being helmed by one of the best of the best filmmakers the medium has ever seen, as I'll rightfully say Spielberg is, I expect a little, no, a LOT better than what one of your standard second tier Hollywood directors would churn out. Even when Spielberg is falling back on cliché (Jurassic Park, Minority Report, and, to some extent, Saving Private Ryan), he does it so deft fully and well that it becomes original and stands out as a great film. The Terminal was not so lucky.
It has some great comic moments in the tradition of Buster Keaton, and it's worth watching for Hanks' and Tucci's performance as well as Janusz Kaminski's always awe-inspiring cinematography. But, in the end, you might sit there and wish the filmmakers had done better, if only because you know they can.