Spielberg and Hanks or no, this movie stinks (**)

Rating: 4/10 (4 July 2004)

Whenever I'm watching a movie like "The Terminal", and all I can do is shake my head and roll my eyes while most of the audience laughs and claps, I always wonder if I'm just being a grump. Then I remember that, no, I don't consider myself a cynic, so it's something wrong with the movie. And boy, is there a lot wrong with this movie.
The first 30-40 minutes are actually quite good. Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, an immigrant from a fictional Eastern European country named Krakohzia who finds himself with an invalid passport upon his arrival in New York, and since he cannot set foot on America soil without a working passport, he is confined to the airport for an indeterminate time period. Hanks is, of course, great, and the swooping camerawork that follows him through the gigantic terminal with all the flashing lights, fast food and souvenir stores is excellent. We can feel Viktor's confusion and helplessness, and the hints he picks up about how to make life in an airport more tolerable are amusing.
Then the movie begins to wander, aimlessly. Lame subplots are brought in to pass the time, like Viktor playing matchmaker for a friendly airport employee (Diego Luna) and a predictably tough-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside INS agent (Zoe Saldana). This subplot is weak to begin with, then is dropped entirely for nearly an hour before wrapping up in a nauseatingly cutesy way.
That's the other major problem: the sappiness. Spielberg's always been eager to lay on the sappiness in many of his films, and it really kills "The Terminal". A very good and intelligent film could have been made with this story and cast (which also includes Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride and Kumar Pallana), but after the promising beginning it heads right into sappy, cliched, unrealistic nonsense.
Interestingly, it's loosely based on the true story of Iranian refugee Merhan Nasseri's experiences at France's Charles De Gaulle airport. I'm guessing that's VERY loosely. That is, unless Nasseri became a working class hero for the staff, had fun foiling the fussy jerk in head of security (Tucci) and had a starry-eyed romance with a flaky stewardess (Zeta-Jones) complete with cornball speeches in front of a gleaming, hand-made water fountain.
Yeah yeah, I know it's supposed to be whimsical. I still say there's a big difference between whimsy (which requires intelligence and a light touch) and a movie like "The Terminal" which irritatingly condescends to the audience by turning what could have been a fascinating film into a pandering, phony, mush-fest.
Hanks and Zeta-Jones are both quite good, but the movie itself is a huge waste of time. After the overrated "Catch Me If You Can" and this mess, maybe Spielberg should stay away from comedy.