Most are familiar with painting-by-the-numbers. This needless remake of "The Poseidon Adventure" is filmmaking-by-the-numbers. The original, while no classic, is fun. Well, this film takes the premise but dumps everything else. The biggest liability is the script by hack screenwriter Mark Protosevich. In this film, a new cast of main characters is brought in. They include a former New York City mayor who was once a fireman (pushes all the post 9/11 buttons), a former Navy Seal, the ex-Mayor's daughter, her fiancé, an elderly architect, and a few stock characters. What are the odds that a former Navy Seal, a former fireman-turned-Mayor, and a successful architect would be among the handful of survivors? Talk about convenient. When a tidal wave turns the ship upside down and splatters most of the passengers on the ceilings, the handful of survivors must make their way to the hull to escape before the ship sinks under the ocean. The director, Wolfgang Peterson, directed exciting sailing-themed movies like "Das Boot" and "The Perfect Storm" and he excels in these kinds of films, so the action sequences are superbly staged. In addition, the sets are convincing and the special effects are impressive. So why does the film fall so flat? It never gives the audience any reason to care. They go from one near-catastrophe to another with little character development at all. The whole film seems mechanical, as though it were developed by a computer instead of a human writer. In fact, the actors are little more than props. None of them give bad performances, but none stand out, either. Kurt Russell as the ex-Mayor and Josh Lucas as the veteran are talented enough to get through this film, but neither are able to carry it. The rest of the roles are pretty cardboard. Kevin Dillon is convincing enough as an obnoxious drunken gambler (wearing black, of course), but his two-dimensional character serves no purpose except for the audience to hiss at. He might as well have been Snivley Whiplash. Richard Dreyfuss plays an aging, despondent architect who's unlucky in love well, but his character has little screen time. Mike Vogel is OK as the fiancé' of the Mayor's daughter, but he little to do but look good in a wet t-shirt. The three female leads (Emily Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, and Mia Maestro) are pretty brunettes who look great in evening gowns and perform competently. But they all look and dress so alike and their characters are so so underdeveloped, they are interchangeable. The only things the female characters contribute to the film are screaming and cleavage. Also, they go from one near-death experience to another so quickly, it became numbing. I felt sorry for the actors. They visibly struggled in realistic sets facing real deluges of water and it's sad to see them work so hard for a film that wasn't worth the effort and did nothing for their careers. I hope they were well-paid.
Review of Poseidon
