I don't know if this was meant to be a comedy, but it sure had me laughing a lot. First there's Travolta's performance. He played his character way too dumb. I bet he wishes he could take this one back. There are the idiotic lines of dialogue sprinkled throughout the film. For example, when Travolta's wife is watching the reporters outside her own house right after finding out about her husband holding hostages, she says, "Look, now they're standing in my flower bed! That's it!" She's more upset about her flowers than about her husband holding hostages. And when Travolta is giving his first TV interview and says something about going to church, one of the kids he's holding hostages say, "I go to church too, with my family." What's the point of that, except to hit us over the heads with how Travolta is an 'ordinary guy' and is getting people's sympathy through the interview. The worst thing of all however is how utterly stupid the story is. First, the kids who are being held hostage over several days act more like their at summer camp then being kidnapped by a gun-wielding nut. They laugh and play with Travolta, they listen to him tell stories, and when he once in a while goes nuts and starts firing his gun out the window, they forget all about it when he opens up the candy machine for them. Real kids in a situation like this would be terrified. Then there are the people outside who start calling him a hero and printing up T-shirts with his face on it after his interview. Sympathy is one thing, that's understandable, but is anyone actually going to call a guy holding kids hostage a hero? And then there's the media. Everytime someone walks out the front door of the museum, whether its Hoffman or one of the kids, they get rushed by this media mob. The police would've barricaded the place, and the reporter's wouldn't be able to get within a hundred yards of that door. This movie is bad, some of it laughably bad, but mostly just plain bad.
