Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stanley Tucci, Chi McBride
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. One of those movies I saw during a summer in Fort Worth where I saw everything, mainly because what else does one do in Fort Worth*.
Did I Like It: I seem to remember in my recent review of 1941 (1979) that I wonder what Spielberg’s career might have become if he his first comedy had been either funny or a hit. It took him the better part of twenty years to come back around to it, but he found the right combination to try again. Sure, one might argue that Always (1989) and Catch Me If You Can (2002)** are comedies, but neither is played largely for laughs.
Harnessing the pure charm which made Frank Capra’s films work, Spielberg finds the right tone. And by that pure charm, I mean having Jimmy Stewart in the film is that right combination. Given that Stewart died in 1997, putting Tom Hanks to work got the same effect done.
That all sounds like I might be denigrating the movie with some faint praise, but Spielberg utilizes some real craft to make such a gentle film feel like it is effortless. Coordinating the large set—what? airports weren’t wild about film companies shooting in their international terminals a couple years after 9/11?—to make it always seem interesting and almost never forces me to focus on just how much a multi-story Borders Bookstore ages the whole thing is something more people should be analyzing to death.
*This doesn’t even try to cover all the other summers where I committed to see anything and everything that came out. Maybe there just isn’t anything to do in Texas or Oklahoma.
**Looking over the filmography Spielberg made both Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Minority Report (2002) in the same year as each of those examples. The man may not be human.