A Cauldron of Advertisement.

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2005)

Steven Spielberg invented in film advertisement, and to this day he integrates it so effortlessly into his films, as he did in Minority Report, in an even more blatant manner than here. Every time the Tom Hanks character walks there is some gargantuan advertisement for a Fortune 500 Company. And to me this does conflict with the kind of movie this is supposed to be.
The Tom Hanks character helps a foreigner get medicine to his sick father, convincing customs that the medicine is for his dog, and in the background, shop at Target! The two seem at conflict. A commercial, and a piece of entertainment are two separate things, not one in the same the way Spielberg has made them. So the movie really gets under my skin in that sense. but other than that this is an interesting but not great little movie, far below what Hanks should be doing, and well, considering some of Spielberg's latest work, pretty typical of Spielberg.
This is a solid little movie consisting of a number of familiar faces in nice character roles filling out the staff at the airport where the Tom Hanks character is forced to live, because of a problem with his home country while he is overseas. The situations are humorous and in typical Spielberg fashion over the top, but still manages to be a little more than marginally entertaining. The way that Tom Hanks' life intertwines with those around him is very entertaining and fun to watch. A love story with Catherine Zeta-Jones is interesting, but doesn't add or take away anything from the movie, except discussing her relationship with a man who really doesn't like her but she can't get away from him, at least that's the way I interpreted her relationship.
I think the bottom line with this movie is it tried to capture the Spielberg magic of Indiana Jones or another of his legendary movies but it's set in an airport terminal, not exactly much magical about that. And the bottom line is all of these corporate logos really doesn't create magic, but it does create magic in the form of money for the movie, which I guess is a form of magic to some anyway.