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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
No Shelly Winters, Pamela Sue Martin or Ernest Borgnine in this one!, August 24, 2006
Director Wolfgang Peterson seems to be in such a terrible hurry with Poseidon - everything moves at such a fast pace that the characters - and the viewers - rarely have enough time to stop for a mouthful of air. And while the movie campy fun and as suspenseful as the original 1972 Poseidon Adventure, the film is certainly short and most definitely to the point.
In this remake you see lots of extras die as their world is turned upside down one New Year's Eve, with little warning once the "rogue wave" is sighted and heads towards the doomed luxury liner. Overcome by flooding, shorting electricity and baked by flash fires, the expendable masses yield with barely more than a shocked glimpse, hands clapped over mouths and last-minute hugs with total strangers.
As the Disco and swimming pool, galleys and grand suites and of course the grand ballroom go belly-up, there's the bunch of heroic characters that defy the Captain and decide to head-onward and upward through the waterlogged, overturned ship in feats that call for a deep-sea suspension of disbelief. No matter, because the delectable Josh Lucas leads this eclectic, mismatched gang, and wouldn't you follow him!
Alas, there's no Shelly Winters-like character in this version. The protagonists all come across, as rather nameless and faceless, blandness is the order of the day here. Kurt Russell plays a devoted father, and the ex-Mayor of New York, Richard Dreyfuss is lamenting being dumped by his boyfriend, Josh Lucas is a gambler and I think a fireman - which is why of course he knows the workings of the luxury liner backwards.
Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mia Maestro, Mike Vogel and Kevin Dillon round at the crowd. And they all have remarkably strong lung capacity, considering how long they have to spend underwater! But it doesn't really matter who's who, or who will sink or swim because once the ship flips, character development isn't high on the list of this movie's agenda.
Obviously the special effects are what it's all about and there's tons and tons of rushing water, exploding electrical circuits, people caught in air-conditioning shafts and being burnt to death by sudden fires - it's all big and loud and contains some expert stunt work and superb integration of digital technology.
The direction is mostly crisp and although it all gets a bit repetitious towards the end - it also becomes hard to figure out what is going on - the film mostly works because it steps up its dramatic speed early on, and its pacing never falters. Mike Leonard August 06.
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47 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Where's an Ernest Borgnine or Stella Stevens when ya need one?, June 2, 2006
WARNING: SPOILERS!!
Yes, I'm a fan of the original Irwin Allen film.
Yes, I have been on a couple of cruises.
Yes, I have seen James Cameron's "Titanic".
Yes, I can hum "The Morning After."
With those facts behind me, I can now embark on my take on Wolfgang Peterson's retelling of the '72 disaster classic.
Shortening the original by almost an hour, Peterson's version delves sparingly into the lives of the stars and "dives" headfirst into the "adventure" for survival. Perhaps, by having two familiar faces, Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss, the director wants the audience to fill in the blanks about their respective characters. Russell's is possibly an extension of the character that he played in "Backdraft" inasmuch as in this film he's a former New York firefighter turned mayor; Dreyfus is, perhaps, "Matt Hooper" from "Jaws," after the great white scared him out of the closet. Both actors didn't seem to stretch their acting muscles much in this film.
As far as the rest of the cast is concerned, Josh Lucas's "reformation" from professional gambler to savior of the group is almost believable, considering the predicament in which the survivors find themselves. Though he has more lines than original "captain" Leslie Neilson, Andre Braugher doesn't get too much screen time and "goes down with the ship,"...literally.
Because of the brevity of character development, the rest of the cast is filled out with your basic stereotypes: the single mom and son (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy Bennett), the young couple (Emmy Rossum and Mike Vogel), the stowaway (Mia Maestro), the wise-ass (Kevin Dillon), and the noble crewman (Freddy Rodriquez).
The special effects are indeed spectacular but more than thirty years have passed since the first film and it's logical that there would be an improvement in that area. However, the first one benefited from having characters of whom the audience could connect. By going "straight for the jugular" with the massive effort spent on CGI effects and stuntwork, Peterson has crafted a nice-looking package but with nothing inside.
And even the original had a nifty John Williams' score; Klaus Bedelt's does not compare, even to his own superlative score to the hit "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."
The film does have one great bonus: the sinking of the ship at the film's end. That is a most likely occurence, considering the massive damage inflicted on the ship by the "rogue wave."
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62 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Violent, strong and quite extraordinary, May 31, 2006
Honestly I didn't even want to go see Poseidon because of the insanely negative reviews it got, but I went only because my boyfriend begged me to see it with him. I was lucky to have seen it on the IMAX screen, and for $15 per ticket I must say that it was worth it!
The movie starts out with gorgeous sweeping angels with the most majestic music that berated into the wide open surface of the ocean around the cruise ship. It starts off fast and there is no sitting around and waiting for something to happen. About ten minutes into the movie I was actually pissed at myself for almost missing it and the scenes in front of my eyes went from wild to insane.
This movie is extremely graphic to say the least. Except for some really dark war movies I have never seen people die and get hurt in so many ways to the point where the realistic portrayal knocked the wind out of my lungs. I felt as if I was there, tumbling with the ship hit by a rough wave exactly on midnight on new years ever. Watching the ship go from wild turning to being turned upside down, having the fuel leak and explode, the rooms fill with ocean water, people flying and dying right and left looked like some crazy National Geographic disaster special. I couldn't believe how hard the struggle for a small group of passengers was as they were going back to the bottom of the boat, now facing up, trying with all they had for a chance to jump into the bottomless black ocean.
This reminded me of the Titanic, and the characters were fresh and modern, they struggled and sacrificed honor and lives, and they took us with them thorough the intestines of the ship. Kurt Russell has always been one of my favorites and his determination and strength were quite powerful in this movie as he and a group or random people reached to the ends of their sanity and physical strength to move forward. Pinocchio sure made escaping out of a whale look a lot easier then escape from the Poseidon was.
Overall I loved this movie yet it was terrifying because it threw human mortality and fragility right in front of the viewer. I do not think I could have survived going through what these people went through and that was sad and scary. Really good movie, bit sad, bit heart warming and definitely very intense.
And on the end note the music in the movie was staggering and breathtaking; it gave this movie such layers of depth that I got goose bumps from the first minute upon hearing it.
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