In 1988 Merhan Karimi Nasseri was exiled from Iran for protesting against the Shah and flew to Paris to claim asylum. Because his request was rejected, he found himself in a bizarre no man’s land: exiled from home, and barred from entering France. A man with no country, he has been living in Charles De Gaulle airport ever since.

Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Terminal, is based on this premise, but not on Nasseri himself. Spielberg’s hero is Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), who arrives in the US to find his native Krakozhia has lost its international recognition while he was in the air.

The airport is run by Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci), a tightly-wound bureaucrat who initially tries to help Viktor. He suggests to him that, although he is not strictly allowed into the US, leaving the airport discreetly would be an easy task. When Viktor fails to take the hint, Dixon even takes him to the door, but Viktor refuses to break the rules.

It’s at this point that audiences might lose patience with Viktor. Respecting the law is admirable to a point, but surely not when the law enforcers themselves are telling you to ignore the red tape? Dixon also loses patience, and becomes increasingly hostile to try to force Viktor out of his airport.

Nonetheless Viktor has a breezy, positive outlook that allows him to overcome any obstacle with good humour, and brings him to the attention of Amelia (Catherine Zeta Jones), a glamorous air hostess with a turbulent love life.

The Terminal is a sweet comedy which aims for Capra-esque humanism, but with a premise which never gets off the ground. Tom Hanks is always charming, but his Viktor has too many ‘funny foreigner’ tics and pratfalls, and seems to have been based on Borat.

The film is amusing throughout, but never funny or dramatic enough to match any of Spielberg’s recent output. The romantic subplots are unconvincing, and the endless product placement seems out of place in such a homespun fable.

The Terminal suffers from a central paradox. For us to engage with Viktor, he needs to be reasonably smart and resourceful. However, for the plot to work, he also needs to willingly imprison himself in an airport for nine months, which makes him sound a bit thick. Consequently, the story never grabs us, as Viktor is either too smart to really get stuck like this, or too dumb for us to care.

(Released by DreamWorks and rated "PG-13" for brief language and drug references.)