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Terminal, The
DreamWorks Distribution LLC

Terminal, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 55 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.2 out of 10
based on 41 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 97 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for brief language and drug references

Starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride, Diego Luna, Barry Shabaka Henley, Zoe Saldana, and Eddie Jones

The Terminal tells the story of Viktor Navorski (Hanks), a visitor to New York City from Eastern Europe, whose homeland erupts in a fiery coup while he is in the air en route to America. Stranded at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a passport from nowhere, he is unauthorized to actually enter the United States and must improvise his days and nights in the terminal's international transit lounge until the war at home is over. As the weeks and months stretch on, Viktor finds the compressed universe of the terminal to be a richly complex world of absurdity, generosity, ambition, amusement, status, serendipity and even romance with a beautiful flight attendant (Zeta-Jones). (DreamWorks)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Sacha Gervasi (also story)
Jeff Nathanson
Andrew Niccol (story)
 
DIRECTED BY: Steven Spielberg  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: November 23, 2004 
Video: November 23, 2004 
Theatrical: June 18, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

88
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.
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88
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.
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88
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.
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80
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.
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80
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.
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80
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.
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80
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.
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80
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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75
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.
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70
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.
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70
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Spielberg has made a small and charming story out of The Terminal.
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70
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.
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70
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.
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70
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.
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70
Film Threat Rick Kisonak
It may not be great but you're guaranteed to feel great walking out the theater door.
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67
Portland Oregonian Karen Karbo
Hanks is remarkable in one of the minor films in smarm-meister Spielberg's oeuvre.
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63
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.
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58
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.
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50
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.
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50
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
There's a thin line between fable and twaddle, and this feel-good trifle veers dangerously close to the latter.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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50
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.
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40
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.
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40
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.
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40
Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
There are worse movies out there than The Terminal, but few that feel quite so…unnecessary.
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40
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.
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40
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.
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38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
The net result is a few shaky laughs and one unwavering sensation -- that The Terminal is interminable.
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30
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.
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30
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Hanks is great; the movie isn't.
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30
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The Terminal is a terminally fraudulent and all-but-interminable comedy.
25
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.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 97 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jeff M. gave it an8:
If a lesser known director had made this movie, I doubt the reviews would be as negative.

Justin C gave it a6:
It's a good movie, don't get me wrong, just a loooooooooong and sometimes boring one.

José M. gave it a10:
Great!

patrick d. gave it an8:
Why such the low rating? The Terminal=excellent!

Ryan M. gave it a3:
This movie tries to charm in the cliched Spielberg way. But except for a few moments, this movie disappoints. Completely absurd and unbelievable, the story becomes more and more ridiculous as the movie progresses. Hanks is also disappointing with a stereotypical and uneven performance. This Spielberg fairytale is one of his worst.

Pat C. gave it a4:
Cheap drawn-out overdramatization and awkward slapstick blows situations that were trying to ring true. Spielberg needs to go back to making movies where the characters are carbon-based life forms.

bunny c. gave it a3:
Could this be worse? One unbelievable plot point after another. Writing that only an idiot could tolerate.

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