IS IT JUST me, or has Steven Spielberg's work taken on a Neapolitan division of flavors over the years? The roller coaster-ride king isn't the same chronicler of majestic historical tragedy viewed through the eyes of a child or, more often, the director's own annoyingly childlike worldview. And neither of those Spielbergs are the plain ol' vanilla melodramatist working the manipulative middle ground sap-soaked for maximum demographic friendliness. Perhaps the best thing about his rather typical new film, The Terminal, is that you immediately know which of the triumvirate you're getting: no animatronic sharks, dinosaurs, or runaway diesels are going to jump out from behind the set's Starbucks or Burger King and sideswipe star Tom Hanks into oblivion – no matter how hard you wish, sorry – nor will anyone scream "give us free" (though they come perilously close). This time the cinematic Cerberus just wants to give his populist puppy head free reign, affectionately licking viewers' faces with his usual "oh, the humanity" insistence. Man-child Viktor Navorski (Hanks) – a traveler from the recently revolutionized fictional country of Krakozhia, unable to leave JFK's airport terminals thanks to a political coup that's left him with a passive passport – substitutes for the usual Spielbergian prepubescent protagonist. And in lieu of characters or narrative, we get one-dimensional ciphers (Stanley Tucci as the villain! Catherine Zeta-Jones as the love interest!) and vignettes designed to show off Hanks's Little-Tramp-meets-Balki-from-Perfect-Strangers mimeograph performance. Like many of the filmmaker's past works, grace notes of true beauty peek through the prodigious displays of technique (a close-up of Hanks's stricken face here, an isolated shot of airport anonymity there) but for the most part, the tsunamis of overwrought metaphors wash over them completely and leave something as sterile as the titular limbo-land in its audience-friendly-to-a-fault wake. (David Fear)