The basic problem in terms of what these look like and what people expect is caused by two things:
1) Movies like "Deep Impact" depicting large curling waves
2) Assorted Cable documentaries that insert footage of big wind-caused tubular curling waves on the north coast of Oahu and whatnot into Tsunami documentaries, because (until last week) there was so little actual footage of tsunamis that looked impressive.
The thing about these tsunami waves is they "break" well offshore. Thus there's no big smooth wall of water marching inland....I think the fact that they've already broken for the most part makes them look a bit smaller on video than they actually are.