I was happy to see big Chi McBride (who always makes me laugh) as a baggage handler. And Kumar Pallana, as an Indian janitor, gets the movie's biggest laughs, juggling rings and spinning plates in the back of one shot (for a moment, it's as if a rerun of "The Ed Sullivan Show" has taken over the movie). But they merely pass through the movie, and so do Diego Luna, as a food-service worker, and Zoe Saldana, as the immigration officer he worships from afar. Saldana is a slim beauty who always looks as if she's two steps ahead of everyone else (I retain a happy memory of her in "Center Stage," using the point of her ballet toeshoe to grind out a cigarette), and Luna wears a dashing mustache that's very touching because his face is too young to pull it off (you can imagine the character keeping that mustache for 50 years and growing into it). Luna asks Hanks' Viktor to find out information about what Saldana likes so he can woo her. But in their very first scene together, he offers her an engagement ring and in the next scene they're hitched. How lazy does a movie have to be to spend scene after scene setting up a romance and then deny us the pleasure of watching the couple court? Even being utterly charming doesn't get Luna and Saldana any more screen time.

But then, apart from the scenes between Roy Scheider and Laraine Gray in "Jaws," I've never been convinced that Steven Spielberg understands anything about male-female relationships. His last movie, "Catch Me If You Can," featured an odd, ugly sequence where Leonardo DiCaprio cheated Jennifer Garner, as a call girl, out of her fee. It felt like Spielberg threw in the con to take our minds off the possibility that his hero might have enjoyed going to bed with a prostitute. And the fact that she was a prostitute was supposed to make it OK that he robs her. The scene felt like the product of a particularly inhibited 13-year-old male mind.

The scenes in "The Terminal" between Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones are meant to twinkle with romantic possibilities. They're forever trying to find a way to get a meal together -- and that's about what they suggest, a pair of people destined to share a very pleasant lunch. There's no chemistry between them, unless sexlessness is Spielberg's idea of romance. And it might just be. CZJ's Amelia is having an unsatisfying affair with a married pilot (Michael Nouri). Viktor is the man she's able to pour out her heart to. Doesn't Spielberg know that when a woman puts a man in that position, she's implicitly or explicitly telling him she isn't interested in him romantically? Zeta-Jones is, as usual, easy on the eyes, and she's light and appealing. But the role is incoherent. When was the last time you saw a contemporary woman deliver a "Stay away from me -- I'm bad news" speech? Did Steven Spielberg get his ideas about women from Susan Hayward movies? And there is no consistent thread through her character. One minute she's defending Viktor to Dixon and in the very next scene berating Viktor for not telling her the whole truth of his situation. Zeta-Jones is too sexy, too beautiful and too sharp to get stuck playing a pixified ditz.

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