PREMIERE.COM'S MOVIE REVIEW (posted 5/11/06)

Who better than Wolfgang Petersen, director of boats-in-peril films Das Boot and A Perfect Storm, to update the 1972 capsized-ship disaster blockbuster, The Poseidon Adventure? But the question also needs to be asked, did that movie really need to be remade? The answer: not really.

Petersen’s Poseidon, like the original, is a slightly ridiculous collection of action/disaster clichés, obvious symbolism, and an ensemble cast of familiar faces playing out two-dimensional stereotypes. When a rogue wave capsizes their luxury liner, Kurt Russell, an ex-firefighter and the former mayor of New York (in an eye-rollingly bald nod to 9/11 heroism), and Josh Lucas, a crafty playboy gambler, lead the older gay guy (Richard Dreyfuss), a kitchen worker and his stowaway girlfriend (Freddy Rodriguez and Mia Maestro), a woman and her little son (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy Bennett) and others through a gauntlet of flash fires, elevator shafts, underwater obstacle courses, and plenty of bad dialogue and obvious plot points. Russell and Lucas literally take turns saying things like “come on! Breathe!” And—spoiler alert—the casual racism of the genre dictates that of course, the non-white people die first. There’s also plenty of women and children huddling in fear while the virile manly heroes perform death-defying dives and hack through debris. Such close hewing to genre convention isn’t particularly scary, but it does make for amusing moments. Screenwriter Mark Protosevich must have chuckled to himself when he wrote the bit about the Crucifix screwdriver, and believe it or not, the filmmakers found a way to work in product placement on the doomed, upended ship (look for the overturned vending machine).

The 1972 film was, indeed, hammy also. That was it’s charm. But where its kitschiness carried it over into so-bad-it’s-good territory, the new movie isn’t quite self-aware enough to be really funny, and certainly isn’t serious or genuinely exciting enough to be thrilling because of its action. — Jessica Letkemann