On the bright side, you get to have Cinnabon and shoeshines all the time: "The Terminal"

So the missus and I had a less-than-satisfactory experience on our way back from vacation in Costa Rica last week. After catching a puddle-jumper from the beach at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m., we arrived at the San Jose airport to find we had missed by a scant 15 minutes the check-in for our 8 a.m. international flight back home. The next flight? Six hours later, at 2 p.m. Yay.

That meant we got to know the San Jose airport for several hours, although nowhere near as long as Tom Hanks' character in "The Terminal." As you may recall, this Spielberg movie very roughly adapts the true story of a man who arrived at a Paris airport only to find he could neither enter France nor return to his native country. As a result, he lived at the airport for years. No word on whether he eventually went crazy hearing the same CNN Airport Network update every half-hour, on the half-hour.

In "The Terminal," Hanks ("Bonfire of the Vanities") is from a fictitious Eastern European nation and gets stuck at New York's JFK Airport when revolution strikes his homeland. Stanley Tucci plays the immigration official keeping Hanks from leaving the airport, while Catherine Zeta-Jones is a flight attendant/love interest. Throw in some zany supporting characters, and hijinks ensue!

The verdict: light and puffy, and only occasionally successful. It was hard to believe "serious" actor Hanks as the immigrant. I suppose the accent was OK, and he makes a decent attempt at giving his character a little depth to go along with the comedy. But it really was all surface stuff, and it probably would have been better had this played as straight comedy vs. some of the tugging at heartstrings from this guy just wanting to go to New York. When we find out exactly why he needs to be there so bad, it's a bit of a letdown.

Neither Tucci nor Zeta-Jones, both fine actors, has more than one-dimension, either, although I will give Spielberg credit for not wholly succumbing to a Hollywood ending. And while the supporting characters could have filled in some of these gaps and given life at the airport more flavor, the main (romantic) subplot is ridiculous, and only one person -- a cleaning guy from India played by Kumar Pallana, best known from various Wes Anderson movies -- is consistently interesting.

I guess when all was said and done, I was just left wanting. Not really more depth, drama, story, etc., but just a more focused movie, probably on the funny stuff. Even when Spielberg does light, i.e. "Catch Me If You Can," he can't help but try to add nuances to the main roles.

As in that movie, I would have been happy with more laugh-out-loud stuff in "The Terminal." It's certainly not bad; heck, Spielberg could film a middle-school production of "Oklahoma!" and make it look sharp. But when you've set the bar high with other stuff, it takes more than star power and well-blocked scenes. On a more positive note, I didn't see one single alien or the other Tom (Cruise) running around JFK.