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DrStefanSvevo
Reviews
Poseidon (2006)
Ship Flip--Cast supposedly "hip'--script for dips. Impossible remake
"I Can't Manny...I CAN'T...I Can't, I am stuck in the spokes!"..."We are top-heavy Linarcos, and when that pump is repaired, I am taking on more ballast!"..."Oh, they're suppositories Mr. Rogo. You um, well, you DON'T swallow them."..."Well, first you arrested me SIX times!"..."LINDA NOOOOO. YOU...PREACHER...YOU KILLED HER...YOU KILLED HER...YOU KILLED HER."..."Nonni, your Brother is dead---(Did you like his music?)..."YOU? You'd even fancy bagpipes?"..."Hey Sis! Did you know this? The engines on this ship have enough total horsepower to light Charleston, SC and Atlanta, GA."..."God loves triers." -----NO. These lines are NOT from the "re-imagining" (God, I hate that term) now infamously known as "POSEIDON". But are from the ORIGINAL "THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE." Let's start there. FIRST...Why Warner Brothers would NOT call this film "The Poseidon Adventure" is just plain stupid. BORING title. SECOND...Why Warner Brothers would even WANT to take a trip down the "Irwin Allen Brock Road" again is anyone's guess. REMEMBER...The ORIGINAL Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were Twentieth Century-Fox Pictures FIRST. (Yes, I know Warner's helped to co-produce The Towering Inferno--But Irwin Allen was under contract with Fox at this time, and was able to cut a deal so both studios would split the financials on Inferno). WARNERS, who signed onto the Irwin Allen Bandwagon 5 years too late, is responsible for giving us Allen's WORST films: THE SWARM, BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, and WHEN TIME RAN OUT...All 3 lost HUGE amounts of money, were subject to terrible amounts of "tinkering" on the parts of the scripts by Warner Execs. The results? THREE BOMBS of monumental proportions. All 3 were very good books however, yet not one of the three resembled the books at all. Now...Warner decides to trot down memory lane and remake a FOX epic that was the touchstone of the modern Disaster Film. OBVIOUS Post-production tinkering, shortening, re-writing, and changes were made to Wolfgang Petersen's film. Wolfgang Petersen...a MOST-COMPETENT director certainly had a better film in mind. I would LOVE to hear his comments on the "cutting room" of this film. Plot holes EVERYWHERE, no character development at all, and the ridiculous "terrorist subplot" could NOT have been "his idea." Warners, undoubtedly saw the Director's Cut, and likely said "too mental"...we want more F/X. So they subsequently chopped up the film, rushed it into release (at an odd time to release a big-budget film--Mid-May--in order to NOT have to make it compete against the July 4th mega-hits), and when it flopped...they moved on. An awful slap in the face to Disaster Film lovers (but then again, Warners NEVER had any idea how to make a Disaster Film anyway), and a mind-numbingly ridiculous film became its product. ALL original characters are gone. FERGIE croons the dopey "pre-capsize" song, KURT RUSSELL copycats the "self-sacrifice" scene my drowning himself, Josh Lucas sticks his lower jaw out so far that he could probably cut thru the hull himself, and the Red Buttons character is scrapped for a more "let's be in touch with today-crowd" and instead becomes a whiny gay man who chucks his cell phone over the side and then hits on the waiter while climbing the elevator shaft. The Eric Shea character from the original is replaced by an annoying buck-toothed cry-baby who looks like Frodo Baggins without the ears. The captain is played by a (totally wasted) Andre Braugher, who has about 8 lines...yet who is probably the MOST CAPABLE actor in this entire film. (Even moreso that Dreyfuss the whiny gay cell phone chucking guy---as Dreyfuss hasn't made a good film in 20 years.) The film gets its FIVE stars for the special effects ONLY. The capsizing scene is AWESOME. The lady falling out of the elevator and going SPLAT on the glass below is an excellent cinematic scene. The flooding of the ballroom is brilliantly done (ALL this is credit to Petersen's talent with effects)...but the BAAAAD SCRIPT falls solely on the shoulders of Warners, and whatever hack let them OK this script. It is a real shame when it can be said that a STEVE GUTTENBERG Hallmark Miniseries is BETTER than a major motion picture. Guttenberg couldn't act his way out of a wet paper bag, but at least HIS film had more plot development, showed due respect to the original premise, and at LEAST kept the names of Belle Rosen, Manny and Acres in it. Thank you DVD powers that be for the ability to "Chapter Select". if you watch this film...skip EVERYTHING except the capsize scene, the flash-fire scene, and the eventual sinking (where the ship actually rolls over AGAIN, and goes to the bottom UPRIGHT). A shame. But you can blame Sheila Allen for letting Warners destroy the picture that was not only THE ALL TIME Disaster Film, but also the legacy of her starry-eyed husband, who created TWO films that belong in a time capsule.
Hurricane (1979)
What Movie Were YOU people watching??
While researching some info on this movie so that I could list some lobby cards from it on Ebay...I stumbled onto this great site. However, after reading the "FAINT PRAISE" that a few have written regarding this absolutely dreadful film, I have to wonder...exactly WHAT movie were you watching? "Good things going for it"??..."Had Jan Troell directing it" (as if that means anything!!)..."Jason Robards was good"... I mean COME ON!! Sure...the "opening title credits of HOWARD THE DUCK" were well-done, but does that mean the film has any merit at all? "Children of the Living Dead" had TOM SAVINI (a great makeup artist in it), but does that redeem that awful excuse to waste good celluloid at all? HURRICANE is SOOOOOOOOOOO bad, that it can be summed up in TWO WORDS: "Dayton Ka'ne" (or is that 3 words, because of the stupid apostrophe in his last name?) And is it pronounced "Kaaaah nay", as in "Kaaaant Act", or is it pronounced "CANE" as in "This film is so far from Citizen Kane, that it makes Revenge of the Nerds 3 look like Hamlet?" Maybe it was a "play on words" created by that master-craftsman Jan Troell (who is CERTAINLY deserving of being a "TROLL" for dropping this dreck on society), and the movie was intended to be titled "Hurri-Ka'ne". Maybe Dayton was taking too long in his trailer fixing his hair, rather than reading his lines, and Troell-doll had to yell into his megaphone..."HEY DAYTON...we are ready for the 123rd take on your opening lines!! Report to the set before I attack you with a "Ka'ne"!! Oh...and as for MIA FARROW...she never could act her way out of a wet paper bag anyway, and even when the paper bag is drenched in Hurri-ka'ne water, she STILL was dreadful. Plus...she weighs about 17 pounds, so if the winds were really that strong, wouldn't she simply blow away and then land somewhere on the set of a Woody Allen film? Lucky for her, the 37 people who actually saw this film in theaters got the treat of watching her spout off lines that are so embarrassingly bad, that you are almost WISHING you could've run screaming out of the theater and into the next one to watch...AVALANCHE. Ooops...ANOTHER Mia Farrow disaster movie. Let's face it. Dino DeLaurentiis was NO Irwin Allen. Mia Farrow, Jason Robards, and Dayton Ka'ne are NOT "disaster movie-worthy" actors. They simply aren't the type. Robards, while a GREAT actor...stunk in this thing and the upcoming Raise The Titanic. By 1979, even IRWIN himself couldn't "sell" a disaster film. The genre was dead. Why they continued to make these when the audience was WAY past them is beyond me. It was a sad ending to a great genre. A FUN genre as well. From 1972-1976, DISASTER rules the theaters. It was FUN to go to the movies then. But then Meteor, The Swarm, Hurricane, Avalanche, Raise The Titanic, When Time Ran Out, and Airport '79 had to screw it up.