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Are you sick and tired of Hollywood's endless year-after-year insistence on remaking and retreading old ideas - even those ideas that most likely were on the verge of tiredness even back then - and revamping them with a cold calculated computer-causative countenance? Well guess what - I am sick and tired of having to decry these shameless money-whored mega-whopper misfits every time they come around - and that is sadly quite often; But then I suppose griping about yet another rehashed Hollywood idea is basically tantamount to a lack of fresh ideas on my behalf, so I'll stop now before I go too far in my self-realized diatribe, and instead talk more directly about the most recent Hollywood recalibration - Poseidon.
Putting aside the inconsistencies in the storyline (what there is of it), which can be tossed off as Summer Blockbuster suspension of disbelief anyway, especially when considering that modern day dinosaurs attacking Laura Dern and Sam Neill, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck saving the Earth from an inconceivable meteor or Tobey Maguire swinging on a thread overhead are far from realism-bound themselves (although even two out of three of those films far outweigh Poseidon in artistic merit), and forgetting all together the aforementioned cookie-cutter, 'nother-cog-in-the-wheel mentality of Hollywood studio heads, Poseidon still plays as nothing more than a ridiculously hurried farce of a genre that is already farcical in and of itself - not that any of this should come as any sort of surprise.
We all know the way it goes, and even if we don't, it couldn't possibly matter since the film could not be more predictable in its outcome (I successfully deduced each and every one of the eventual survivors within the first seven minutes of the film) but just in case, here it is - A dozen or so plucky, adventurous or just downright pathetic characters (read: atypical stock characterization) are quickly introduced through sound bites and toss-off lined backstories. Then, in order to keep the film under 100 minutes (because we all know just how attention-deficit-addled modern society is), we get the big fucking wave, blocking out the New Year's Eve full moon and engulfing the predestinatedly doomed luxury liner in its big CGI-generated gullet.
Quickly after that computerized boon, the B-listers that matter head for the top...er bottom. Josh Lucas as the poker playing playboy with a smile that could melt even the hardest of jaded hearts (although this one is kept quite chilled throughout); Jacinda Barrett as the plucky and perky possible love interest and Jimmy Bennett as her achingly precocious (read: annoying as all get out) son. Kurt Russell as the former NYC Mayor and ex-fireman (that's two post 9/11 heroic types for the price of one); bug-eyed beauty Emmy Rossum as his daughter and damsel-in-distress and Mike Vogel as her swooning boyfriend (secretly engaged behind daddy's back). Richard Dreyfuss as the jilted token gay man who is literally on the railing of the ship about to end it all when the wave is first spied against the horizon; Argentinian sex symbol (and occasional actress) Mía Maestro as the inevitably claustrophobic stowaway and Freddy Rodriguez as the galley worker who is hiding her out in his cabin. Toss in Kevin Dillon as the irritating Lucky Larry - a slightly altered version of his "Drama" character from Entourage - and you have yourself the makings of a real underwater thrill ride (which I believe was one critic's bold statement emblazoned across this week-end's newspaper ads for the movie).
Unfortunately for we the viewers, Wolfgang Petersen - who went from the critically acclaimed Das Boot to this underwater dud in just under twenty-five years - gives us no thrill and very little ride to even hope to thrill to. Seemingly rushed, with any character development or witty repartee left on the editing room floor (if there was any to begin with), Petersen sprints us from one obvious corridor to another, leaving no room for us to consider the ridiculousness of the story - which may have been his plan all along considering the usually lengthy filmmaking history of the man who brought us the absurdly harebrained (and equally CGI-congested) snorefest Troy.
Some critics (Peter "I'll praise just about anything out of Hollywood because I work for a corporate sell-out magazine and I don't want to lose my job by bad-mouthing the studios" Travers of Rolling Stone to name just one) claim to have been surprised by some of the "twists" in the movie, but I cannot fathom how someone that sees movies for a living (and in doing so has got to have at least several thousand movies under their belt) could ever be surprised by anything in this movie. We know exactly who will live and who will die. Top billed actors (except for the exception to the rule Armageddon) never die in these kind of films (lucky you Mr. Lucas) but annoying cliche'd big mouths do (so long Mr. Dillon) and you can't kill off the young just-engaged couple (so towel off Miss Rossum and Mr. Vogal) but what about dear old dad (Mr. Russell take a deep breath and see if you can hold it) - who may end up as the Shelly Winters of the remake set. Also, you can't kill a child or his mother (Miss Barrett and young master Bennett can breathe a sigh of relief now) and you can't kill the only gay man, due to a desire to be PC (Mr. Dreyfuss please take a bow) but on the other hand, it seems as though you can kill off anyone of Hispanic descent and no one will give a rat's ass. Apparently I have no qualms about giving away any of the supposed thematic payoffs in the movie, since you would have to be pretty cinema-illiterate not to figure it all out way ahead of time (and yes, that jibe is directed at you Mr. Travers).
Full of overblown posturing and some rather questionable acting motifs (who by the way, ever told Josh Lucas that he could act in the first place? Evidently also the same person who told him that if all else fails just grimace and yell Tarzan-like into the wind), Poseidon - mechanically stiff remake of the campy Poseidon Adventure of 1972 (a film that even with lack of modern-day f/x, still ends up seeming more realistic and less posed and postured as its remake) - sinks deeper and deeper (mind the pun) with every step upward...er downward, and with the exception of a handful (one hand, not two mind you) of enjoyably derisory pastiche, can never quite hold its breath long enough to make us care.
The cruise ship Poseidon is - obviously - named after the Greek God of the sea, but perhaps instead, the ship (and film) should be named after a different Greek God - Momus, the God of mockery, faultfinding and scoff, and (appropiately enough) the God of criticism. Perhaps then, a divine force would have stopped all this before it ever happened.
- May 13, 2006
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