? Almost assuredly
this is the first kids’ flick based (really loosely) on a piece from National
Public Radio’s This American Life. Back in 1988, a snowstorm held up all
air traffic at Chicago’s O’Hare airport around Christmas. Some kids got put up
in hotels; some had to spend the night in the big “UM” room. The fictional part
here has the latter group reduced to a quintet of misfits who try to escape,
chased by an off-kilter security chief played by Lewis Black. In other words,
it’s a junior version of The Breakfast Club, aimed toward those way too
young to remember that 1980s touchstone.
+ As directed by Paul
Feig, creator of the short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks, the movie
champions the underdogs just like that series. The kids manage to make an
airport look more fun than Tom Hanks did in The Terminal as they
discover the joys of spare flotation devices and unclaimed luggage.
- On the other hand,
the script (not by Feig) has little of the pathos of Freaks & Geeks,
although the kids are supposed to be bonding because their mostly divorced
parents have neglected them. Nothing here rises above the level of a
Saturday-morning cartoon. The kids can all be summed up with an adjective or
two. There’s the brainy nerd, the tomboy, the dumb fat kid, the snobby girl,
and the normal kid who, for some reason, all the others agree to follow in his
quest to pretend to be Santa for his little sister back at the hotel. The
required sappy ending is no more believable than anything else. One also fears
for the public’s safety if the airport security is as lax as portrayed here. No
wonder the airport is fictionally called “Hoover” here.
= **1/2 I’m pretty
sure my 13-year-old self would’ve found this to be fast-paced fun; my
42-year-old self found it pretty juvenile, but that’s what it’s trying to be.
