Poseidon Adventure [DVD]

Here's a great idea - take a much loved classic disaster movie, and make it with a bunch of almost-was and once-was actors, on a TV budget, and draw it out over twice the time! If that seems like logic to you, then you may well love this entirely redundant time filler. On the other hand, with some decent stuntwork on display it certainly could have been a lot worse, with the bangs and shouting drowning out the dodgy acting and leaky plot. Yes, there are more holes in the plot than the poor Poseidon has.
Based on the original Paul Gallico novel, many of the characters names are the same, and some key set pieces are the same, paying homage to the original (fiery engine room, Christmas tree ladder, and the famous man falling on to glass in the ballroom..). However, there seems to be a gross misconception of what makes a great disaster movie. Poseidon Adventure was the start of a wave (sorry) of likeminded movies, which thrived on creating big budget set pieces, but with a background of memorable characters. Who can forget Gene Hackman's preacher, or Shelley Winter's one-time swimming champion..? Well the writers here did - they ditched all the memorable aspects those characters had, and added some entirely redundant ones. Vitally, you soon realise with a sinking feeling that the sense of claustrophobia so brilliantly done in the original is thrown away by a combination of cutting to the outside rescue efforts (terrible idea, in which all suspense is dissipated) and some lightly lit interior sets with a few pools of standing water. The plot is padded out by having a terrorist plot instead of a giant wave, and while this seems more `with the times' it fails to be more than an obvious plot device, adding nothing except running time. The sense of being chased by the water lapping at their heels just never appears, even at the end, so the sense of urgency is, shall we say, diluted.
The actors frankly seem all at sea, none of them really bringing the required oomph to stem the tide of that nagging `when will it end' feeling. Steve Guttenberg gamely tries to steal his scenes by grabbing people along the way and trying to talk about his feelings, but he fails to convince - perhaps he is just in too deep? Rutger Hauer may as well be asleep, or at best on cruise control, for all the charisma he brings to the role. Only Bryan Brown and Adam Baldwin at least seem to be having some fun, even if there are no new ideas being floated and they fail to stem the tide of boredom for much of the movie. Stunts are certainly ok, digital effects are so-so.. I watched on a big screen which was less than forgiving, but that's the reality of made for TV perhaps, where not every effect can be ship-shape.
And then there is the ending - where in the original, we had the terrific speech from Hackman, adding pathos and gravitas to proceedings, here we have an endless scene of the few survivors crossing a catwalk to escape - which frankly, just doesn't look that dangerous. It leaves the end feeling somewhat of a damp squib.
For family friendly fare, well, this is a Hallmark Channel presentation, so it's probably safe (as long as you don't want to explain to the kids exactly what Steve Guttenberg was doing with that masseuse that made his wife so upset..), and does not embarrass itself too much when seen as a 4 hour TV mini-series compared to others of its type.. but for a fresh stab or even a tribute to a much loved classic - why not just get the original, as this one is just too watered down to be memorable in comparison.

Poseidon made a huge comeback in 2005 with the announcement of a film (criminally underrated may I say) and a TV mini series. Sadly the TV mini series is at best middle of the road. The acting is fine and no one is out of place but the script is dire and the action sequences are few and far between. The script gives people random speeches which amount to nothing, each character is one dimension with no real progression except for Steve Guttenburg's character who has an affair and then gradually drifts back to his family. You know who will die pretty much from the start too and when they do die almost each death is made laughable by poor CGI integrated. The best thing really is that there's lot of references to the original movie which is fun enough to pick up on.

So why 3 stars and not 1? The first half deserves one star for dragging - I'm all for character backgrounds if they're explored properly - here its silly snippets of silly dialogue. However the second half goes along quite well in spite of its downfalls and I'm a sucker for disaster movies. I've seen a lot worse but really the original and the remake are far more superior, as is A Night To Remember and that is a black and white 50's movie!

...but a long way from Hell, last year's mini-series version of The Poseidon Adventure doesn't live down to its reputation. Aside from Peter Weller's every other line being "I'm Captain Paul Gallico" or "This is your captain, Paul Gallico" just in case anyone doesn't get the joke or Steve Guttenberg (looking increasingly like a failed attempt at cloning Albert Brooks) constantly endangering everyone's life to stop them to tell him how much he likes them with what he thinks is his best sincere voice but which really sounds like someone trying to have a conversation while having a particularly difficult bowel movement, there aren't many unintentional laughs to be had.

Rutger Hauer simply looks bewildered, as if he wandered onto the wrong set by mistake and somebody gave him a hat and a dog collar, Sylvia Syms looks alarmingly like Shelley Winters, C. Thomas Howell is starting to look even more alarmingly like an ageing 80s porn star and only Bryan Brown and Adam Baldwin look like they're having any fun. The spirit of Irwin Allen is briefly resurrected near the finale: sadly, it's not the Allen of The Towering Inferno or the original Poseidon but the one who spent an eternity having people very, very slowly cross a bridge one by one for the last two reels of When Time Ran Out.