Moscow on the Hudson (1984)
Directed by Paul Mazursky
A Russian circus visits the US. A clown wants to defect, but doesn't have the nerve. His saxophone playing friend however comes to the decision to defect in the middle of Bloomingdales. He is befriended by the black security guard and falls in love with the Italian immigrant from behind the perfume counter. We follow his life as he works his way through the American dream and tries to find work as a musician.
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What critics compared Moscow on the Hudson to
There are bumpy moments in Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson's screenplay (Viktor learns English even more quickly than Robin Williams' Vladimir in "Moscow on the Hudson"), and the film feels just a tad overlong, but ultimately "The Terminal" creates an intricate, fairy-tale world of its own.
Combine the stoic resolve of Charlie Chaplin's little tramp with the wonderment of Robin Williams' beleaguered defector in Moscow on the Hudson and you've got Viktor--an innocent abroad whose life skills are about to be sorely tested.
Hanks, in one of his worst performances, plays Viktor Navorski, a funny Eastern European in the tradition of Andy Kaufmans La tk e and Robin Williamss Vladimir in Moscow on the Hudson.
And by regarding the film as a neo-Moscow on the Hudson (same pidgin accent from a television comedian-turned-Oscar-winner, same institutional setting, same formula love story), the timing of The Terminal is indeed interesting: like 1984's appalling Moscow on the Hudson, the picture appears late in the first term of a Republican president who has led us into record deficit and unprecedented international instability.
By herself, she bravely faces an array of contractors (many of whom look like Robin Williams in his "Moscow on the Hudson" period), finds new friends and hopes to love again.
Bigelow also lifts a scene, a bit shamelessly, from Paul Mazursky’s “Moscow on the Hudson,” in which Russian defector Robin Williams finds himself overwhelmed by choice in an American supermarket; she might have found another way to make her point about the glut of creature comforts American life has to offer.