COMEDY-DRAMA
CRITIC'S CHOICE
As a preschool teacher might put it, Hanks and director Steven Spielberg play well together. This entertaining movie is the duo's third film collaboration, following Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me If You Can. While three times doesn't prove their luckiest charm, this tale of a man marooned for months at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport is an honorable effort that succeeds in amusing while also telling us a little about America the way it is now and the way we wish it were.
Hanks is Viktor Navorski, a tourist who arrives at JFK to find out that his fictional Eastern European homeland of Krakozhia has undergone a coup and he is temporarily a man without a country. He's ineligible for entry into the U.S. and unable to go home. Confined to the airport, he at first barely survives on club sandwiches made by layering mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise between saltines. But this would-be visitor to America soon proves himself a model of Yankee ingenuity. To the consternation of the stuffy bureaucrat (Tucci) overseeing his case, Navorski finds a job at the airport and befriends its staff, many of whom were once newcomers to this country too.
Zeta-Jones, though lovely as a flight attendant on whom Navorski develops a crush, only touches down for brief appearances between flights. The movie mostly sails along on Hanks's considerable charm and Navorski's resourcefulness until near the end, when it tries for a puffed-up finish and collapses like a soufflé gone bad. The film's lesson, if it has one, is voiced by Tucci's boss, who reminds the uptight Tucci, "Compassion: That's the foundation of this country." Spielberg and Hanks show enormous compassion for Navorski, as he does for his new American pals and they for him–a sentiment worth remembering as we draw close to celebrating America's birthday. (PG)
Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan
ADVENTURE COMEDY
You're either a Rob Schneider fan, or you're not. So the fact that the–let's be nice here–modestly talented star of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo provides one of the funnier cameos in this lame remake of Jules Verne's classic novel about global travel in the late 1800s signals the low level of humor to which this uninspired enterprise aspires. Low as in loaded with pratfalls, bodies slamming into walls to allegedly hilarious effect and folks losing their pants. Eight-year-olds will be amused, particularly boys partial to the antics of the Three Stooges, but anyone else will be impatiently counting the days until journey's end.
The film's hero remains priggish English inventor Phileas Fogg (Coogan), who wagers that he can circumnavigate the earth in 80 days. He often takes a backseat in this remake to his savvier traveling companions, his Chinese valet (Chan), who's a whiz at martial arts, and a feisty French artist (Cécile de France).
As in the 1956 version, the cameos are the thing here. Arnold Schwarzenegger, flexing his acting muscles one last time before he became California's gov, yuks it up as a lecherous Turkish pasha, and Kathy Bates as a haughty Queen Victoria and Jim Broadbent, World's pompous villain, have a scene near the film's end that displays actual wit, but by then it's 79 days too late. (PG)
Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor
COMEDY
Peter LaFleur (Vaughn) and White Goodman (Stiller) are owners of rival gyms. The laid-back LaFleur's is a rundown wreck near foreclosure, while the preening Goodman's is a gleaming testament to his own narcissism. In this silly, formulaic comedy, the two end up settling their differences on a dodge-ball court, hurling balls at each other's most sensitive parts.
There's a sadistic edge to DodgeBall, whose primary ambition appears to be gaining laughs by showing folks sustaining bodily harm. Stiller huffs and puffs, trying vainly to pump up to feature size a role better suited to a sketch. The preternaturally languid Vaughn, his narrow eyes barely opening, tosses off his lines as if marking time between naps. (PG-13)
>The Terminal's Inspiration
The greasy food. The stale air. The constant blare of announcements. And the most annoying thing about being stuck in an airport? Says Merhan Karmini Nasseri: "The noise of the wheels on suitcases scraping across the tile floor."
He would know. Nasseri has spent 15 years living in Terminal 1 of Paris's Charles de Gaulle International Airport. "I am always waiting," says the Iranian exile, 58, whose predicament inspired the premise of The Terminal. (The movie's producers paid Nasseri a reported $275,000 for the rights to his often publicized tale, though the finished film "is in no way his story," says a DreamWorks studio rep.) Nasseri deplaned in Paris in 1988 with a ticket to London and no passport (he claimed his traveling papers had been stolen). Unable to leave, he took up residence in the airport, filling his days writing in journals. Tolerated by airport officials, he sleeps on a red plastic bench, bathes in the men's room and sends his clothes to a concourse dry cleaners. Will he see the film? "There aren't any theaters here," he shrugs.
In truth, Nasseri could leave and see the movie elsewhere: After a long court battle, his lawyer Christian Bourguet persuaded France to give Nasseri asylum. But since 1999, the eccentric Nasseri has refused to sign papers that would grant him his freedom. "He's stayed so long that he can't reach the decision to leave," says Bourguet. "He's not crazy. Just mixed up."
Seducing Doctor Lewis
This pleasing little comedy is the French Canadian version of all those cute Irish and English films in which colorful villagers pull a fast one on a city slicker. Here, upon learning that a desperately needed new factory won't move to their isolated fishing village unless the town has a doctor in residence, the locals embark on a complicated plan to hook a potential candidate. (Not rated)
The Stepford Wives
A comedic remake of a 1975 thriller, this tale of suburban husbands replacing their wives with compliant robots boasts amusing one-liners and performances but falls flat. (PG-13)
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Peter Mikelbank.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
