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Poseidon May 21, 2006 |
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Let’s get the water analogies for “Poseidon” out of the way right off the bat, because at the end of this review, if I find myself writing stuff like “water logged”, “deep sixed”, “drowned in excess”, “awash in clichés”, “belly flop”, “sunken turkey”, or “wet brained”, than I’ll officially know what it’s like to take the easy way out on a negative review of a really bad movie. Let it be said that I’ve just used seven water related phrases to comically describe Wolfgang Petersen’s disaster epic, and that I am now satisfied enough to not have to fall back on them anymore. If, by chance, I find myself stuck in the third paragraph, and the term “soaked” pops up in a slightly witty pun on the cynical use of the word “sucked”, than you’ll have to forgive the lapse, because the more I think about it, the more I begin to see how truly terrible this film is, and the longer the review of a hideous remake of an already half-bad ‘70’s flick, the more prone the writer is to find a cheap laugh in remembrance of a painful two hours in a theater chair. But that’s it, eight is enough, as the saying goes, so we’ll bid farewell to the water phrases and say hello to a conventional critique of what is a shining example of Hollywood at its most unoriginal: throwing 150 million dollars at a remake of a movie nobody talks about anymore, pepper it with slightly recognizable new stars (Josh Lucas, Emmy Rossum), and aging old stars (Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss), hire a director who has had some success with boat movies (“Das Boot”, “The Perfect Storm”), create a thousand or so computer effects shots of the titular boat going down, jam it all together with an over-the-top melodramatic score and lame-brained screenplay, and release it at the beginning of summer, when stuff like this can thrive, before the season’s true blockbusters emerge. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and though it may look cool to see a computerized ocean liner flip on its skull thanks to a ginormous, equally computerized tsunami (“rogue wave” as it’s called in the film, perhaps out of respect so soon after an all too real tsunami disaster), “Poseidon” just doesn’t work, and if it’s even possible, it’s so bad it makes the original, with it’s horrible dialogue and “state-of-the-art” miniature work, look like a work of supreme genius. Of course we won’t go that far, that’s downright silly, but the point has been made; remakes are wrong, and this flop is as wrong as they get. To go over the ultra realistic plot of “Poseidon” would be an effort in futility (wave, flip, death, band of survivors, more death, smaller band of survivors, climb, fire, water, rescue), so we’ll skip it and instead talk about the stock characters that make up the story and bring to life a screenplay that is so eloquent, at the point of death, upon seeing the wave at their doorstep, a ship mate opts not for a Shakespearian soliloquy on impending mortality, but for the classic “No…No.” Maybe at that moment in life better words are hard to conjure (I’d opt for a Keanu Reevesian “Whoa”), but still, it’s apparent that we’re not supposed to care for words when a million dollar effects shot is about to commence and send the film into utter chaos. That chaos affects roughly eight characters (expendable characters played by Freddy Rodriguez and Kevin Dillon meet early, predictable fates), climbing their way up to the bottom of the flipped luxury boat: a professional card shark (Lucas), an ex mayor of New York (Russell) and his hot daughter and her boyfriend (Rossum, Mike Vogel), a gay architect (Dreyfuss, playing the first gay architect of his famed career, I think), a sexy stowaway (Mia Maestro), and a mother-son combo (Jacinda Barrett, Jimmy Bennett) who have immediate chemistry with the poker player, suggesting maybe, if you’re romantic, that there could be a future for the fatherless boy and his pretty, young mother on the tournament circuit with the world’s first heroic card sharp, if, that is, they were all to survive. Of course survival for these characters is of the utmost importance, but we could care less for them; the screenplay gives us very little information to make us want to see them escape death by drowning, the acting is textbook heavy breathing, wide-eyed generalizations on human emotion (need I repeat the “No…No” masterpiece of acting and writing from before?), and one explosion after another distracts from whatever characterizations Petersen is trying to get from his actors. By the time Kurt Russell comforts an exasperated Josh Lucas after an elevator shaft falls on the bus boy’s head with “there’s nothing fair about who lives or dies,” I’d all but given up on rooting for either when it comes to this boring, predictable group of disaster film cardboard boxes. Going into “Poseidon” I had hopes that Wolfgang Petersen, who so memorably crammed us into a pressure cooker of a German sub in the action masterwork “Das Boot”, could revitalize a promising concept (upside down boat, what’s not to love?), with newfangled computer effects and a good cast of recognizable faces, but instead I came out with a newfound respect for the artistry of James Cameron’s “Titanic”. Needless to say, it’s never good to walk into one expensive boat film with high hopes and come out with those hopes dashed and another expensive boat film on your mind, but that’s life, and I’ll take it over any old hackneyed water metaphor to conclude a negative review any day of the week. “Poseidon” is playing at the Movie-Plex 59. by Adam Suraf
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