Remake Replaces Cheesy Fun With Grim Realism
By Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News
May 12–The problem with “Poseidon” is that it’s not bad enough.
“The Poseidon Adventure,” now that was a bad movie.
So gloriously bad that people love it like a crazy uncle – there’s a Poseidon Adventure Fan Club with an annual convention, where everybody knows the name of the stuntman (Ernie Orsatti) who fell through the glass ceiling of the overturned ballroom, and where you can get an autograph from a “Poseidon Adventure” star like Carol Lynley.
Speaking of Lynley, I would like to apologize to her and co-star Stella Stevens – in our summer movie preview, I misidentified Jill St. John as the female co-lead who appeared in the low-cut evening gown.
I don’t know how I got the six of them mixed up.
There were bigger stars in the original “Poseidon Adventure,” but the featured attractions were obvious – an entire upside-down ballroom was constructed so that a camera could be mounted in the ceiling (floor?), enabling us to look down Stevens’ gown.
You think we’re saving Ernest Borgnine’s performance?
“Poseidon Adventure” also reminds us that even though he’d just made “The French Connection,” Gene Hackman didn’t really warrant a good stylist. He had that Cliff Robertson thing going on, like someone was trying to make his hair look like a beret.
Alas, you won’t find anything so fabulously bad or enjoyable in “Poseidon,” director Wolfgang Petersen’s grimly competent $160 million disaster movie about a cruise ship hit by a rogue wave.
Computer animation means the whole catastrophe can be rendered more or less realistically, and Petersen has done so. Is that a good thing? There’s less of a corny remove between the viewer and the action on screen. In this slick, professional new version, the spectacle of people falling through the air and being impaled on overturned tables looks real enough, as do the crispy corpses of victims burned in flash fires.
Are you getting the sense the movie isn’t all that much fun? Well it isn’t, and neither is it harrowing, since the characters aren’t deep enough to invite viewer attachment.
Most die anonymously in the fated ballroom, sticking dutifully to the captain’s orders to remain where they are. As in the original, though, a small contingent breaks off to pursue what they regard as a more sensible strategy – trying to find a way up to the bottom of the overturned ship, then to safety.
From the beginning, there’s something furtive and morally dubious about this splinter group. Yes, Hurricane Katrina has taught us not to trust the post-disaster strategies of authority figures, but the way this group of escapees keeps the plan on the down-low smacks of selfishness (especially as one of their number turns out to have specialized knowledge that could have helped a great many survivors).
In one ghastly vignette, a man in a tuxedo (Richard Dreyfuss) saves himself from falling down an elevator shaft by kicking away the waiter who is clinging to his leg. It’s like a visual representation of every argument Paul Krugman has ever made about the Bush economic plan.
Others in the thoroughly drenched Fellowship of the Wrung include the former mayor of New York (Kurt Russell), his recently engaged daughter (Emmy Rossum), a professional gambler (Josh Lucas), and a mother and son.
The kid is only 8 or 9, and even though you know the movie probably won’t kill him, that doesn’t stop you from cringing every time he’s dangled over an abyss, or nearly drowned in a flooded crawl space.
Where, oh where, are the wet, buxom actresses, the glistening decolletage?
Gone, replaced by a gruesomely realistic stack of corpses and thoroughly convincing carnage. Another victory for computer-generated images, I guess.
—–
Copyright (c) 2006, Philadelphia Daily News
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.