Terminal

Here's a little cooking tip from someone who likes to watch the Food Network after coming home from the Tavern until about four in the morning, at which time I either pass out in my soiled pants, or I am so inspired that I whip up a batch of waffles using flour, vanilla, sugar and shaving cream because I don't know how the fuck to "beat eggs until stiff." I know how to beat something else until stiff, but I can never leave well enough alone and then continue to beat until soft. The waffles aren't that bad. I mean, yeah, you get sick, but what good cooking foesn't give you the runs? Anyway, I've watched enough hot chicks sucking wooden spoons and moaning "Ohh, that's good" to fuel a million fantasies about being kitchen utensils and also to know what makes food good.

Anyway, back to my cooking tip: If you're gonna serve your guests a heaping pile of horseshit, don't sweeten it with saccharine. Have the decency to use real sugar. In particular, I'm talking about a load left behind by the horse's ass called Hollywood called ?The Terminal; it's so loaded with saccharine it'd kill a million lab rats. By saccharine I mean artificial sweetener, the kind that tastes sweet, sure, but it also tastes fake. Without all the forced sweetness, this movie probably wouldn't have made me vomit as much, but I still would have gone into a coma.

Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorsky, an apparently retarded Eastern European whose fictitious country's government is overthrown while he is on his way to the United States. Because his country has no government, his passport is no good and the airport in New York can't let him into the U.S. Instead, he is forced to live in the "International Transit Lounge," which is a gleaming shopping mall until his country resolves its crisis and his passport becomes valid again. It ends up taking ten months, which the movie tries really hard to portray in real time.

Holy shit is this thing a snooze. I mean, it's more sleep inducing than eating an entire box of rancid Little Debbies in a grocery store alley. It's based on the true story of an Iranian man who has been living in the DeGaulle Airport in Paris since the Shah was overthrown. But we're talking loosely based, loose as in Starr Jones pants after a stomach stapling. The real man is sort of interesting because he can now leave, but chooses not to, and he's been there for nearly 25 years. But, it's an interesting in an "article-in-the-paper" kind of way, not in a way that would make a great movie.

The grassfuckers behind The Terminal figured that out, so they sprinkled all sorts of that artificial sweetener "Hollywood Magic" to make this massive, expensive turd go down as easy as a coconut-strawberry Zinger. Hollywood Magic is also known as trite and predictable one-dimensional heros and bad guys, contrived plotting, and unbelievable relationships that arbitrarily place the lead characters right where the story wants them. It's a non-story, fattened up with nonsense.

The contrivances include an evil, by-the-books airport manager played by Stanley Tucci. For no particular reason, he wants Hanks out of his airport and acts all villainous in his efforts to get him out. He does a lot of snickering and smug mugging, but it feels so fake and so unnecessary, simply a machination added to give the limp-dick story a little oomph. Then there are all the predictably "wacky" airport regulars who, of course, take a liking to the pudgy retarded man who somehow touches each and every one of their lives like an Eastern European Forrest Gump. Fuck, Hanks even manages to romance Catherine Zeta-Jones as a lovelorn stewardess who, for no understandable reason, falls for him. Maybe it's the rank odor of his clothes after ten months, or maybe it's his lumpy misshapen body and double chin. The story would have us believe she's drawn to his pure heart, but fuck if he isn't hiding something. Nobody is so purely good and sweet as Hanks' character. At least, nobody we'd ever believe in or want to spend any time with.

Easily the worst and most annoying performance in this monstrous crapfest is Hanks. While his character isn't intended to be a retard, he might as well be for his simplistic stupidity. This character has the retard knack for occasionally surprising everyone with some brilliant words of wisdom. And it's pretty God damn amazing how many people confide in him. This character also learns to speak English in record time, and has such a cute-as-a-button reason for wanting to be in New York. See, he's there to fulfill his father's wish. I don't know if it's director Spielberg who decided to be so fucking patronizing to Eastern Europeans with this bullshit, or whether it was Hanks. All I know is that even retards will be pissed with the simplicity and phoniness of this character.

It's just bad, treacly, phony bullshit. To its credit, it's efficient, but so is a good server at McDonalds, and I sure as hell don't want to spend two hours with any of them except for that one on Wadsworth witht he big tits. This is a movie for people who clip "Love isÖ" from the paper and hang up pictures of Garfield saying "I Hate Mondays" at their cubicles. A movie for people so desperate to believe in goodness that they don't give a monkey's buttplug whether it comes from believable sources. One Finger for The Terminal. Fuck you Spielberg and Hanks. Give us a little more credit next time.