POSEIDON so whole-heartedly embraces its essential inanity that it’s very, very hard to dislike it. Though boasting a big budget and some spiffy special effects, its goal is a modest one: kill 99 minutes with some whiz-bang escapes and the chance to watch actors get paid a great deal of money to hold their breath for seemingly endless amounts of time.
Director Wolfgang Peterson wastes no time in turning the luxury ship Poseidon upside down. Twenty minutes is all it takes to introduce us to the (mostly) ritzy folks who will shortly be damp and desperate. There are alpha males Dylan (Josh Lucas), the professional gambler, and Ramsey (Kurt Russell), the politician who has suffered some sort of disgrace never gone into. There are the lovely ladies, including single mother Maggie (Jacinda Barrett), Ramsey’s daughter, Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), and stowaway Elena (Mia Maestro). Connor (Jimmy Bennett) is the adorable child of said single mom, Mike Vogel is Christian, the lovable hunk who is Jennifer’s boyfriend, hence the bane of Ramsey’s existence, and Richard Dreyfuss, sporting a diamond ear-stud the size of a kumquat, is Nelson the architect who has just been jilted by his boyfriend. And on New Year’s Eve of all days. There amid the streamers, balloons, and Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas performing forgettable songs in a dress that is a foreshock of the disaster to follow, revelers face the New Year with varying degrees of hope and dread while a crack crewman on the bridge senses something amiss. No, not the lack of a script that even pretends to follow the basic laws of logic. It’s a rogue wave that is bearing down on the ship before anyone has a chance to do much of anything. The ship goes snap, crackle, and belly up as electrical systems short out spectacularly, people and furnishing tumble precipitously, and Andre Braugher as the ship’s captain tells the frazzled passengers in the ship’s ballroom to remain calm. Help is one the way, he assures one and all while they take their places on what used to be the ceiling, and once the bulkheads are closed, everyone will be safe.
Dylan, though, is having none of it. Neither is Ramsey, whose daughter was last seen dancing the night away in another part of the ship. For reasons that make no more sense than any other part of the script, they are joined by the mom, her kid, the stowaway, and the architect on the perilous journey first to the disco where Jennifer was boogieing down, and thence to the propeller shafts, fresh air, and safety. Safety being a relative concept in this context. Character development consists strictly of the alpha males barking at each other, the ladies being brave, Richard Dreyfuss futzing, and the kid being far too adorable, even when waterlogged. Along the way they pick up the unfortunately monikered Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon), who is doing a lounge lizard impression of the part his brother, Matt, played in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and, more importantly, gives the audience a taste of what POSEIDON might have been like if, say, the Coen Brothers had taken a whack at it.
But I digress.
Petersen has the sense to keep things moving along at a breakneck pace. Hence, there’s little time for the audience to notice that these people are running on dumb luck and an ocean showing inordinate amounts of patience in inundating the ship. Things like an escape plan involving a strudel table and a spatula roll off the viewer the way the killer wave rolled off the ship.
Speaking of which, the effects are good without being over the top. The shots of that killer wave rolling over the ship have a nice, slow restraint and impersonal creepiness to them. Things blow up, burn up, and corpses abound. Plus there is never a quiet moment, though the only real suspense is in figuring out who is going to buy the farm next and how. Knowing the specifics of the original won’t help, because these are new characters and mostly new situations. Here’s a hint, though. The lower down on the list of credits an actor finds him or herself, the longer the odds of him or her making it to the surface.
POSEIDON has more cheese than the caves of Roquefort and more syrup than Vermont. Yet it is a flick that, while completely forgettable, is almost wholly inoffensive. It doesn’t want to be taken seriously so if, for some reason, you are willing to suspend disbelief, REALLY suspend it, there is a moderately good time to be had on the aquatic roller coaster. If you’re not, you will be spending a lot of time rooting for the ocean to make much quicker work of these plucky folk.
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