Customer Reviews

The Poseidon Adventure (2005 TV Movie) (Full Screen Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Ever felt you been here before and yet not...Deja vu, right? NO, it's a bad remake of a classic disaster film.

32 years later, Hallmark Entertainment tries to do a mini series of the Poseidon with modern day updates. Instead of a tidal wave, it is a bomb that inverts the ship upside down. The cop character is now a homeland security agent (Adam Baldwin) dragging a terrorist through the wreckage of the ship to justice. The priest is now a Bishop (Rutger Hauer). The Red Button character from the first movie, now played by Bryan Brown, is now married to singer, an International Idol pop star. The smart kid from the first film is now a junior Speilburg with a video cam that never runs out of battery life. The young girl (Pamela Sue Martin character in the first film) is now the daughter of Steve Guttenberg, a cheating family man who is headed for divorce. Peter Weller is the Captain who character name is the same as the original book's author (Paul Gallico)...a nice touch! You can not fault the actors, they do the best they can with this material..one would blame the script writer who could not make this chestnut revised without treading too close of repeating the deepness of the original

There are a few additions to the remake that does not make this sail any better. Alex (ER) Kingston is a sort of federal international rescue head, the role seem so added at the last minute. A ship's doctor (C. Thomas Howell) who reminds me of DR Bricker from Love Boat.

However, this watered down soap opera is not better than the original in a longer form...in many ways it drags down the audience in this watered down version. In someways, it seem like a LOVE BOAT episode with dramatic melodrama and adventure added in the mix. If you saw the first, most of the same things happen with few changes. The last shot is the ship sinking..THANK GOD NO SEQUAL!

So you want that sinking feeling again, get the originally 1972 film with Gene Hackman, Red Button, Shelly Winters, Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens. The Poseidon Adventure (Special Edition). However This remake misses the epic adventure mark by miles.

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

...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.

This DVD is the uncut two-part version, with a not especially interesting featurette and six cast interviews (including one with Guttenberg that's so smug and self-satisfied you'd happily drown him for real) and a DVD trailer.

This tepid remake of the Irwin Allen original features only one thing worth mentioning: the topsy-turvy rollover scene between Steve Guttenberg's character and his shipboard mistress as the two are in the midst of a "secret rendezvous." The sight of the tumbling pair, along with the cabin's furniture and other appointments, is good for a snicker or two.

The computer imagery of the overturning ship, as well as the other "special effects," is about as wooden as a deck chair from the Titanic.

The only thing I didn't really like about this movie was the lack of captioning, since I'm a little hard of hearing at most times. Had to pay a lot of attention to what the characters were saying and a lot of them talk in thick accents. But otherwise, the movie was brilliant! Sadly, this movie seemed to bomb out on the reviews--a lot of low-stars here on Amazon. Let me straighten one of the reasons out.

"The Navy SEAL is yelling that the ship is sinking, but the ship shows no sign of sinking at all." DUHHHHH! It's a 150,000-ton cruise ship! Even while capsized and 90 percent underwater, the mass of the ship is huge and is at least 150 feet high out of the water from the capsized keel to the waterline, so it wouldn't show the entire ship making the plunge just yet. And the Navy SEAL lieutenant was right. Anyone would know that by that time, the ship wouldn't have much time left and it showed in several shots that the bow was just a little lower in the water than before. His estimate that it would have less than 30 minutes left was right on the dot. Large ships simply wouldn't sink as fast as the movie viewers would expect them to. The Titanic itself was cut open 300 feet by an iceberg in 1912 and it stayed afloat more than 2 hours, never making such a dramatic dive into the ocean until the very end. So the way they had the ship in it's last moments was accurate enough for the budget in making this movie. I especially liked the way the ship was turning over after the bomb went off! It seems to stay level enough for a few minutes while the terrorist was taking over the ship, but the level of water entering the punctured waterline eventually loses the ship's stability to stay level and WHUMP!

Some other viewers attacked the way the ship had capsized. "Ooh, we're used to the ship being turned over by a freak wave, not a terrorist attack." What the heck is that supposed to mean? In these days, it's more obvious that terrorists from the Middle East might make a sneak attack on something else than hijacked planes and kill thousands of people just to bring their point across. Cruise ships hold thousands of people and an attack on one of those would be definite in the near-future if we're not careful. Plus, the odds that a ship would capsize from an exploding bomb is more greater than being capsized by a 500-foot freak wave. You think other ships might have noticed such a thing forming from far off and send out a warning in time? Right.

This movie was great, focusing on several people that end up being on the ship. The father, played by Steve Guttenburg, suffering from a troublesome marriage, and going on the cruise to be with his family. His 12-year old son with his video camera makes things surprising as well. Imagine having footage of people trying to get out of a capsized, sinking luxury ship! Then we have the producer from Australia and his wife, the reverend, the old widow, and the somewhat-paranoid agent from Homeland Security, who tracks the comings and goings on the ship, and hoping to keep a low profile aboard while racking up suspects for a terrorist attack. That cruise director guy was an annoying freak, though. He takes command of the people in the ballroom and tries to keep them from leaving, even when the water has risen 6 inches in the first hour after the capsizing. Any moron can see those windows in there won't hold back the water pressure for too long, and even when the windows collapse, you see the same moron trying to keep people from climbing up the Christmas tree to the only exit, right before it topples over and the room turns into a death crypt.

I also liked the response of rescue units to the area in those scenes where they realize the ship has gone missing. Something I would've liked to see on the other version of POSEIDON. Great flick!

NOT NEAR AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL. SPECIAL EFFECTS WERE OK. TOO BAD PETER WELLER DIDN'T HAVE A LONGER ROLE.

Before "Poseidon" hit theaters, this TV-movie remake of Irwin Allen's 1972 disaster film classic aired on NBC this past November. Of course having seen and enjoyed the original "Poseidon Adventure", I had to see this one. In the end, I wish I hadn't.

This TV-movie version is absolutely bad filmmaking. It's as simple as that. Bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, and bad special effects. So many of the original film's scenes are replayed here, and the changes that were made were absolutely wrongheaded. For example, the one big change that was made here was how the ship capsizes: instead of a giant tidal wave it's a terrorist blast that sends the ship upside down. To have the ship turn over by a terrorist blast instead of a giant tidal wave was a very big mistake. This was a change that I found totally inappropriate. But that's not all. The movie wastes a fine cast of actors (from Rutger Hauer to Steve Guttenberg to Peter Weller) who are all powerless to stop this film from self-destructing. The writing and directing look as if they were done by amateurs. But the worst thing about it are the lousy special effects, which look absolutely cheap in this film, especially in the fiery climax.

I want to make a point at how bad this film is. I don't know if it was the filmmakers behind this junk or the executives at NBC who decided on this but when this movie first aired last November it aired on one night over three hours (with commercials). Originally, this film was supposed to air as a two-parter (four hours over two nights), because that's the version you get on DVD. So this was cut by 40 minutes before making its network debut. I've seen both versions, and either version won't make any difference because they're both bad.

The new feature film remake "Poseidon" isn't a great film but at least it has better special effects than this one. It also has better actors too, and a director (Wolfgang Petersen) who knows how to make exciting movies (even though his "Poseidon" remake isn't as good as his previous movies). So if you have to choose between which remake to watch, see "Poseidon" and skip "The Poseidon Adventure" TV-movie.

But my real advice is all too obvious: stick with the original 1972 movie.

There are already two versions of this story out there, both of which performed better than this version. The terrorist element seemed a bit too cliche and the remainder of the movie was a bit cheesy and bland. It is not totally unwatchable but on the whole why waste your time with this one. Pick up the original or the big screen remake.

This made for TV remake of the classic thriller, is okay. Sometimes you wonder what the folks who made the film were thinking, like, the whole terrorist theme, and why did they make the priest a bishop, (who hardly challenges authority)?

They did keep some things, like the Christmas Tree bit, and the dude falling and smashing into the stained glass ceiling...but then again, they did not keep enough of the classic film, like
the real reason the ship capsized...They added some really stupid stuff, like the plot with the husband cheating on his wife, and then the woman whom he cheated with, dies. Why even bother?


Here's the deal. I got this film, since I loved the classic, and will be seeing the upcoming Hollywood Remake. And I am sucker for corny films. But I think, that if you buy this film thinking this is a great remake, you may be disappointed.

Not worthy of a long review - simply: pants. Does a great disservice to the outstanding 70s disaster movie, dumbed-down to fit into a 21st century, 'America is great, terrorists are bad', mould. The ship capsises not because of a freak wave, but because of - yawn - a terrorist bomb. Yes, that old chestnut - an international terrorist network, a fiercely loyal American good guy etc. etc. etc. Cheap, shoddy cash-in. I'd give it no stars if I could. Highly implausible, Cliche-ridden, stereotypical (basically anyone with an accent is a bad guy), pure American CHEEEEEEEEESE.

While one may question releasing a remake of the first Poseidon adventure mere months before another remake comes out, I was pleasantly suprised when I watched this after renting it at my local Blockbuster store.

The movie follows the original Poseidon adventure fairly closely. On new years eve a giant ocean liner capsizes and several passengers struggle to survive and escape before the ship goes under. What's new in this version is that instead of a giant tidal wave, we have some crazy terrorists who blow a hole in the ship, causing it to take water and quickly capsize during a rough storm.

The movie is basically the same as the original, though there are some noticable differences. While the main charachter in the original was the priest, the main stars in this movie are a family who's going through some rough times as the parents try to keep thier marriage together. We've got a homeland security agent who tries to keep the ship safe (but as you can guess, doesn't succed), and the fact that the outside world is racing to save the ship before it sinks.

Several charachters from the original return here, such as the kids, Mrs. Rosen, the minister, the steward, while some charachters don't return (Mrs. Rosen's husband is gone, so she's a widow), and some get new roles (Rogo is now a homeland security officer undercover as an off-duty policeman). For the most part I think the charachters worked fairly well. There are some good moments between them, such as one of the stewards acting as a vampire for the boy's movie (which he's constantly filming throughout the entire film). The minister, who was a bit angry in the original, is now more calm, friendly, and focused in this remake (which I like). The acting is, on the whole, above average for a made for TV movie. None of the charachters felt overly weak or overly good. Just acceptable, average acting with some good parts. If I really had to point somebody out, it would be the boy, who is constantly filming the disaster with his video camera (and working in tandem with a guy who wants to buy the footage and turn it into a TV drama). Although it was an interesting idea that he's trying to make a movie out of the events around him, I found it to be irritating and annoying.

The real star of this movie is, predictably, the special effects. While not ILM or WETA quality, the special effects of the ship are actually quite impressive. There were a few shots where I found myself thinking "Is that a real ship?". The turn over sequence in paticular, where the ship capsizes, is excellently done and had my attention throughout the entire scene. The sets are also well done, conveying the sense of an upside down sinking ship very well.

However, the aspect of the movie that needed the most attention was the suspense. In short, there really wasn't any. The only real suspense I got was wondering who was going to die, though one can get a good idea by focusing hard enough. When a charachter does die, it's usually quick in the manner of "Oh no!...Let's move on." In the original, the charachters are constantly scrambling to stay ahead of the rising water. Here, there's hardly any water chasing after them, meaning that they have plenty of time to keep going. The only real sinking comes in at the last minute. One quick note is that while the rescuers are constantly saying that the ship is going under, it stays perfectly level during the climax of the movie, and for some reason satalite images show the bow going under. There is some suspense in the movie, but there's very little of it.

lastly, the main topic of the movie (the family trying to stay together) just dosn't work well. The mom and dad argue, then the dad eventually goes off to have an affair with another woman, then works to coming back to his family after the ship turns over so he can finally see that family is what matters etc. It sounds really good on paper, but it does not work very well here.

There's also some morality points brought up, such as why do terrorists want to kill people, having an affair is bad, etc. There's a very symbolic sequence involving fire near the end of the movie where it is very obvious that those who are not exactly saints are going to get barbecued (though i'd say that the second victim really diddn't deserve to die). Take that low moral values!

Overall, i'd recommend this movie for the special effects, the sets, and the interest of seeing who lives and who dies compared to the original movie (some of the charachters who died live in this version). It takes some good ideas and some modern day questions, trying to work them into a classic disaster story and for the most part at least pulling it halfway off. I'd say that it's at least worth a rental.