Terminal, The

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The movie is a delight in many ways: an unabashed romantic comedy and Capraesque fable that takes Spielberg into realms he's rarely traveled before.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Like a story-spinner from the "Tales of the Arabian Nights," Steven Spielberg begins by demanding we accept impossible things. If we do, his spell can enchant us; if not, it must vanish like colored smoke.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A sweet and delicate comedy, a film to make you hold your breath, it is so precisely devised. It has big laughs, but it never seems to make an effort for them.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

Thanks to Spielberg's vivid storytelling and Hanks' matchless gift for bringing the common man to life, this is a relentlessly charming movie.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

In a summer of remakes, sequels and movies swollen with effects, The Terminal stands out as a strikingly original comedy.

Variety Scott Foundas

This buoyant, optimistic fable seems to share in the late Ronald Reagan's optimism for America. It does so with the help of a gifted comic ensemble led by Tom Hanks.

Empire Ian Nathan

Far less cuddly than expected, this unusual and elegant movie may have failed to connect with US audiences but it proves Spielberg is currently the most unpredictable director in Hollywood.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

To be savored for its unhurried approach and simple fish-out-of-water story that favors individual character-driven moments over dramatic plot developments.

USA Today Claudia Puig

If moviegoers suspend their disbelief -- easy enough thanks to the diverse and talented cast, as well as Spielberg's capable direction -- they're bound to enjoy this cinematic fantasy.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As well made, entertaining and seductive a showcase for Hanks as it is, the movie doesn't have a magical impact and doesn't stay with you. And while you're watching it, there's always some slight annoyance, inconsistency or motivational-lapse to slap your face in almost every scene.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

It's an original, and a gamble, and one of those movies that works better than it should, despite considerable flaws of conception and execution.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

I liked every minute in it. Other films are like empty containers; this one's full. It's full of invention, full of moments, full of business, full of the nuances of human interaction, full of feeling.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Here's a film made by grown-ups for grown-ups, on grown-up themes of statelessness and belonging. Yet you could show it to a 6-year-old and have him or her understand all the nuances of plot and characterization.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

So beautifully directed, so pleasurable to watch and so thoughtfully put together, it's a disappointment when you realize, halfway through, that the movie is going to fall way short of a masterpiece.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Rarely have I been so acutely aware of a movie's softness and sentimentality, and rarely have I minded less. Some of the credit surely goes to Mr. Hanks...His performance is so easy and amiable that its nuances emerge only in retrospect.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Spielberg has made a small and charming story out of The Terminal.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The Terminal perfectly captures Spielberg's ambivalent worship of capitalism. His big boy's love of gadgetry is everywhere apparent in the security cameras, blinking computer screens and one-way glass walls.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

In the latest of a long string of memorable performances, Hanks balances wide-eyed confusion with innate shrewdness, finding a character who's both unfailingly sweet and nobody's fool.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It’s an odd fable: Viktor is the mysterious visitor who shows us what the American Dream is all about--in the movie’s terms, compassion for others--without ever wanting to become an American himself. He's a spiritual twin to E.T., who also had trouble phoning home.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

It may not be great but you're guaranteed to feel great walking out the theater door.

Portland Oregonian Karen Karbo

Hanks is remarkable in one of the minor films in smarm-meister Spielberg's oeuvre.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's a hokey piece of melodrama in a movie that cheats its characters - and its audience - out of some emotional truth.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

I didn't mind The Terminal, but I didn't really buy it, either. Spielberg has crafted the film with a proficiency as seamless, and impersonal, as the setting, and you may feel, after a while, that you're longing for your departure time.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Seeing The Terminal is like experiencing an uneventful flight: The trip was pleasant but not delightful, and you’re happy to deplane at the other end.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

There's a thin line between fable and twaddle, and this feel-good trifle veers dangerously close to the latter.

Time Richard Corliss

The Terminal is Spielberg's shortest feature since the first "Jurassic Park," yet it drags, plods, piling one lifeless situation atop another. For all the effort and good intentions, the movie is in-terminal-ble.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In his sappiest film since 1989's "Always," director Steven Spielberg has come down with a case of the cutes that the whole cast catches.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Spielberg believes, admirably, that art can grow from love, and vice-versa. But in The Terminal he makes the mistake of insisting on it, repeatedly.

The New Yorker David Denby

The Terminal is highly crafted whimsy; it lacks any compelling reason to exist, and its love story is a dud. Ever bashful when it comes to boy-girl stuff, Spielberg has structured the relationship between Amelia and Viktor to be as asexual as possible.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Manages to entertain, and yet, like so many flat-footed attempts at waving the flag, it feels disingenuous and dogmatic.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

As usual Spielberg is too bored by everyday life to use his premise for anything but a fairy tale, whose cheap pathos suggests a bad Chaplin imitation. This grows progressively phonier and eventually devolves into "Mr. Roberts," with Stanley Tucci filling in for James Cagney as an airport bureaucrat.

Slate David Edelstein

Isn't a disaster, but after an entertaining start it congeals into something icky and fake, and it leaves you thinking that Spielberg and his team of screenwriters (Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson, from a story by Andrew Niccol and Gervasi) missed the real story.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

There are worse movies out there than The Terminal, but few that feel quite so…unnecessary.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Making Viktor a Middle Eastern, a South Asian, or even a Bosnian tourist would have given this trite exercise an edge--and a measure of human pathos.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Even at the low end of the Spielberg spectrum, there has always been some air of ingenuity, some sense of the maker's excitement. Not here. The Terminal plods in spirit and execution.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The net result is a few shaky laughs and one unwavering sensation -- that The Terminal is interminable.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Probably the worst-directed film Spielberg has ever made. A peculiarly rhythmless piece of work, it seems to go on forever, though nearly every one of the scenes is cut off before it has been dramatically developed.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Hanks is great; the movie isn't.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The Terminal is a terminally fraudulent and all-but-interminable comedy.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

As he showed in the recent "Catch Me if You Can," also a Hanks vehicle, Spielberg has little talent for emotional realism, not to mention psychological suspense. He should scurry back to "Jurassic Park" as soon as the next flight leaves.