Poseidon

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Now let's see... I remember watching the credits roll, coming out of the theater, catching the subway back, and thinking to myself that I had just seen a decent movie. And yet as I sit down to write this, I've almost completely forgotten the movie already. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of explosions, a lot of water; I remember all that. The characters and the story? Not so much.

The film is of course Poseidon, the newest disaster movie from Wolfgang Peterson, who directed the other boat-in-peril blockbuster The Perfect Storm, and most recently the epic, Troy. A remake of 1972's The Poseidon Adventure and stars Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and a host of other "I-think-I-recognize-them" faces. The story is very simple: a huge cruise ship is hit by a wave and turned upside-down, and while the majority of the survivors are content to sit and wait to be rescued, one small group of people decide to try to make their way out.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Oh, and about ten minutes of time in the beginning is given for character development. And when I say character development, I mean we are introduced to the Dashing Rogue, the Reluctant Father, his Pouting Daughter and her Hunk Fiancé, the Gay Guy, the Christian, the Mother, and her Cute Kid. Oh, and I almost forgot the Drunken Jerk/Comic Relief. Other than what I just said, we know next to nothing about these characters. "It's never fair who lives and who dies," Kurt Russell says in the trailer. I find that line especially hilarious; in disaster movies, you can always be pretty sure that the most famous faces tend to live the longest.

And yet I said in my opening that I thought this was a decent movie. That's because although its flaws are readily apparent, Poseidon delivers exactly what it promises: suspense, action, and special effects. There are plenty of great moments, not least of which is the opening shot, in which we emerge from underwater and circle the entire ship in a single shot. Or when one of our heroes dives willingly into a pool of flames. Or the wave sequence, of course, when the boat capsizes; I saw this thing on an IMAX screen, and it really was rather breathtaking.

Normally, I would tell you to wait and catch this one on DVD, but the thing is, I have a feeling it will play far worse on the small screen. If I wasn't marveling at all the spectacle in its large-scale glory, I'd have a lot more time to realize how utterly boring, and sometimes annoying, the characters are. Sometimes they're handled well -- Richard Dreyfuss, refreshingly, does not at all play the gay man as a caricature. Kevin Dillon, meanwhile, plays the drunken jerk as a caricature to legitimately funny ...