“Poseidon” Overturns and Sinks

An Uncle Sam Review

If you are looking for a movie high on big named actors, explosive special effects, stunning cinematography, awesome sets and production quality, but low emotional or cerebral contact with its audience then “Poseidon” is your place to be next weekend.

This remake of Irwin Allen’s 1972 “The Poseidon Adventure” is everything the original was not. The original could be best described as a TV movie accidently sent to the wrong place and somehow ended up in movie houses across the globe. “Poseidon” on the other hand, is a huge, super-budgeted, big screen, in-your-face, Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot) movie.

The only problem I found is that with such a vehicle that screams of emotional content, it somehow never reaches the audience. Instead, viewers will be forced by the sheer size of the endeavor to touch only the surface of all the angst these passengers must be going through, because Peterson either decided himself or gave into the pressure to focus more on the adventure of the effects instead of the drama in the hearts of the movie’s self-centered characters. I was rather surprised that Peterson would allow that to take place with his film. Afterall, “Das Boot” (the Boat) was one of the most gripping emotionally-torn movies to ever hit theaters.

With actors like Kurt Russell, Andre Braugher and especially Richard Dreyfuss, one would expect to sense some of that deep internal turmoil one surely feels when placed in such over-extending circumstances as the passengers aboard this overturned luxury ocean-liner must have felt… but, alas, they don’t deliver. The audience won’t even be treated to a Shelley Winters type heroine character to care about cry and mourn over.

This movie could have had great potential to set the bar for action movies a little higher but it fails to do so. Instead the movie going audience are treated to the same old Hollywood line of fire, smoke, crash, boom and bang.

My recommendation is skip the movie and take your date out to play some miniture golf. At least the emotional level will rise above a mere yawn when your loved one hits that ball successfully through the middle of the turning windmill.

I do suggest renting or buying the DVD once it is released in that format. It is still a good at-home movie to watch with the popcorn and all the fixins’.

“Poseidon” makes it’s US theatrical release on May 12, 2006. Check the Warner Bros. official Poseidon website for release dates in your region of the world, or visit the IMDB International Release Date page.

On the Uncle Sam scale of 0 to 5 I give “Poseidon” a 2.