Poseidon

Poseidon is worth watching up until the last five minutes, which really lets it down. I haven't seen the original, so I don't know if it has the same ham ending, but I really felt it let a good movie down. It is worth watching though.

Luckily for the main characters of Poseidon, Josh Lucas sometimes doubles as Aquaman. Special talents of being able to breath underwater and communicate with fish, Aquaman is a handy companion when trying to escape from a luxury cruise ship that has flipped over. Not only can he dive into water that is filled with burning fuel, but he can swim for great lengths without coming up for air, all the while keeping everyone else alive.

A lame cast, featuring Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell aim to stay alive when the gigantic cruise ship Poseidon gets flipped over by a "rogue wave". Whatever a rogue wave is, I couldn't tell you, they only seem to turn up in movies, but it's something the helmsmen on board the ship could feel before it hit the ship, ten minutes into the movie. And there is the problem with this mile a minute disaster movie. There isn't a story to tell because there isn't a story. This is simply a film about a handful of characters, played by well known actors, trying to survive. They aren't characters but rather the actors that inhabit them. They don't have personalities because they are not given time to develop any. The first ten minutes of the film are spent introducing us to each of the characters. They all get one scene to strut their stuff. Josh Lucas is a professional poker player, Kurt Russell was the former Mayor of New York, Jacinda Barrett has a kid, Emmy Rossum is

Russell's kid and she's going to marry the character that Mike Vogel plays. I'm leaving out their character names because they simply don't exist within this movie.

Character development in Poseidon consists of added lines of dialogue that are seemingly more of a shot in the dark like this exchange.

Josh Lucas - "Careful, I think there is a flash fire behind this door"

Kurt Russell - "How do you know what a flash fire is? Did you spend time on a sub?"

Josh Lucas - "Sort of".

Holy Aquaman !!! What? Could Lucas have been a volunteer fireman? Could he have been a chemistry genius in school? There are so many reasons why Lucas might know what a flash fire is but the script just leaves it there and it's never mentioned and nobody cares. In the original Poseidon Adventure it takes an hour for the ship to overturn and the result was a cast of characters we cared about, lead by Gene Hackman. I dare you to care about any of these characters. Poseidon turns into the type of film where you just want everybody to die and quickly. The kid is trapped under some cage because he wandered off even though three quarters of the boat is submerged? Great,let him die. That's obviously not what director Wolfgang Petersen was going for but that's what he got.

Petersen it seems decided when remaking The Poseidon Adventure to throw the script away and get to the part he enjoyed, the boat turning over. But, by doing that, he screwed everything that worked about the original movie. While it might not be the strongest movie in the world, at least The Poseidon Adventure had character development that kept that film floating. Petersen doesn't even make the film look that much better. While there is very little computerised graphics used in the film (in favour of real sets, which is a definite plus for the film), the CGI when it is used, like the initial tour around Poseidon is lame. It looks fake. It looks dated and it's the first time you can laugh at the film. It just gets easier from there. It's laughable that nobody on the ship survives except for 6 people. Even the Titanic had more survivors. It's laughable that each character, including the 7 year old kid, has the lung capacity of a mermaid. They must have been having lessons from David Blaine. It's laughable how quickly the water rises and then how slowly is rises, depending on how long a scene needs to run.

Poseidon is simply a rubbish movie. As a summer blockbuster, we're almost conditioned to go easier on these big budget movies because it's not about the characters or the story; it's about the ride. The ride can't be any fun, though, if you don't care about who's taking it. It also can't be fun if it's just plain frustrating. Even at only 90 minutes, Poseidon suffers from an annoying feeling of moving too slowly. The action sequences aren't exciting and consist of a lot of underwater swimming that would be impossible for normal man. It's lame and unreal and is a bigger death blow to the ship than the rogue wave.