The Terminal
DreamWorks Distribution | Release Date: June 18, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
13
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
I didn't mind The Terminal, but I didn't really buy it, either. Spielberg has crafted the film with a proficiency as seamless, and impersonal, as the setting, and you may feel, after a while, that you're longing for your departure time. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Corliss
The Terminal is Spielberg's shortest feature since the first "Jurassic Park," yet it drags, plods, piling one lifeless situation atop another. For all the effort and good intentions, the movie is in-terminal-ble. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
In his sappiest film since 1989's "Always," director Steven Spielberg has come down with a case of the cutes that the whole cast catches. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Seeing The Terminal is like experiencing an uneventful flight: The trip was pleasant but not delightful, and you’re happy to deplane at the other end. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
There's a thin line between fable and twaddle, and this feel-good trifle veers dangerously close to the latter. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Manages to entertain, and yet, like so many flat-footed attempts at waving the flag, it feels disingenuous and dogmatic. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Spielberg believes, admirably, that art can grow from love, and vice-versa. But in The Terminal he makes the mistake of insisting on it, repeatedly. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The Terminal is highly crafted whimsy; it lacks any compelling reason to exist, and its love story is a dud. Ever bashful when it comes to boy-girl stuff, Spielberg has structured the relationship between Amelia and Viktor to be as asexual as possible. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Making Viktor a Middle Eastern, a South Asian, or even a Bosnian tourist would have given this trite exercise an edge--and a measure of human pathos. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
As usual Spielberg is too bored by everyday life to use his premise for anything but a fairy tale, whose cheap pathos suggests a bad Chaplin imitation. This grows progressively phonier and eventually devolves into "Mr. Roberts," with Stanley Tucci filling in for James Cagney as an airport bureaucrat. Read full review
40
SlateDavid Edelstein
Isn't a disaster, but after an entertaining start it congeals into something icky and fake, and it leaves you thinking that Spielberg and his team of screenwriters (Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson, from a story by Andrew Niccol and Gervasi) missed the real story. Read full review
40
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
There are worse movies out there than The Terminal, but few that feel quite so…unnecessary. Read full review
40
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Even at the low end of the Spielberg spectrum, there has always been some air of ingenuity, some sense of the maker's excitement. Not here. The Terminal plods in spirit and execution. Read full review
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