The Terminal

Cynics of cinema, contemptuous of mainstream success, dismiss Steven Spielberg as an old-fashioned sentimentalist. They will love The Terminal. Tissues are de rigueur; when it doesn't ooze, it gushes - will the Tom Hanks fan club refrain from clapping every time he burbles through a sentence of gobbledegook, pertaining to be a language of Eastern European origin!

This is the story of a man who lives at a US international airport. Viktor Navorski (The Tomster) does not have the correct papers, because his country is in the middle of a coup d'etat, which means he has no nationality and is, in effect, stateless and stationary.

The film is one enormous set, with product placement everywhere and the camera crew ever keen to test crane shots. If Viktor can't leave and go to New York, where he has to fulfil a promise made to his dying father - sob if you must, it is no longer listed as an un-American activity - he has to survive at the airport, with no money, hardly any grasp of the language and the administrative head of internal security (Big Night Tucci) up his ass.

In time, and it feels long and slow at the start, he makes friends with lowly members of the airport staff. When an air hostess (Mrs Douglas has never looked more ravishing) honours him with her presence, you know the Easter bunny's going to hop round the corner with a tin of cookies, as the janitors break into an impromptu song-and-dance.

When all is said and done - not much is when you look at it - this will be categorised as a Tom-U-Like special, like Cast Away, in which The Hanky Man performs his solo act, accompanied by a chorus of well-wishers.

It would be true to say that The Terminal is Spielberg Lite, entertaining enough on the level of Catch Me If You Can, except Tom is no Leo, and blessed with the Zeta-Jones seal of approval.

Next week Mr Hanks will play Albert, with Meryl Streep as Queenie, in The Victorian Monologues, directed by Frank Darabont.