"The Terminal" is mostly a delightful fairy tale until it gets bogged down in feelings. Director Steven Spielberg doesn’t trust that we feel for the main character, an Eastern European played by Tom Hanks who can’t legally leave the airport. For Spielberg, happiness cannot occur unless it has people crowded around. So when Hanks’ underdog starts to become a mascot at the airport where he is detained, we must see workers smiling at him. And when he is finally given a chance to leave the airport to tour New York City, workers from every store leave their posts to follow him to the airport doors for a farewell in a stunt so outrageously absurd it would be entertaining if it weren’t so unnecessary.

But the message of the mass send-off is punctuated by another reading. As Hanks is bombarded by airport workers, he is accosted with gifts from the retail stores where they respectively are employed. The Discover Channel store and others give him trinkets on the house as if hoping to get a product endorsement in return. The moment is oddly fitting as an allegory for the way American corporations (the retail workers) are now looking to enter the market in Eastern Europe (Tom Hanks’ character) as it modernizes, joins the European Union, immigrates west and buys Starbucks frappuccinos. It’s not an accident that the first piece of advice Hanks gets when he's let loose on the airport is, “Go shopping.”

Indeed, sometimes the airport looks more like a mall, an impressively big one though it is. Because the film takes place almost entirely within the airport sound stage, every detail in it must ring true. An early shot pulls back from Hanks to several hundred feet away showing the intimidating breadth of the place. More than once you think about how the dolt-with-a-heart Tom Hanks is cast away on the airport island, especially when he suddenly takes up carpentry to pass the time. I half expected him to visit the airport sporting goods store for a nice volleyball to converse with.

Luckily, Hanks acquires a communal support group of eccentrics, one from each of the major continents (an allegory for the UN?). And he also finds romance with a flighty flight attendant who loves to hate men. In some ways they make you long for that volleyball because Hanks is at his best when he is the underdog against the system. Once he starts winning friends, arguments concerning goat medicine, and late night poker games, he’s become something else: a gloater. With his infectious charm, naivete, and compassion, I’m surprised the film couldn’t throw more obstacles in his way. But that’s why Spielberg puts in the throngs of people cheering on Hanks’ departure. They do it so that he doesn’t have to make us do it on our own, like a laugh track for a joke that isn’t funny.

The parts of "The Terminal" where Hanks is discovering the airport (he finds that he can earn a quarter for each luggage cart he returns to the rack) remain strong as visual gags and slapstick, screwball farce. But even here Spielberg keeps the camera moving to follow Hanks, and shots where the camera is still last for only a second at a time. I wish he would use composition more than camera movement to direct our eyes. I wish we could get more moments without score to actually reflect on the things we are watching. I wish Spielberg would stop playing to the cheap seats and let his formidable skills do the talking. But even after all the adulation in the world for his films, he still is a sucker for the cheering crowds of fans, which for Spielberg is the hallmark of a happy existence both on camera and off. The Dreamworks captain realizes his dreams through his work. And who can blame him?
-Howard Ho