Film Review: Poseidon

Poseidon (12a)
Dir. Wolfgang Petersen

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

Congratulations – you’re the lucky winner of a trip aboard Poseidon, the largest cruise ship ever built. You’re sure to thrill as a massive ‘rogue wave’ hits, you’ll wince at the hammy acting of the trapped survivors, you’ll probably think to yourself ‘haven’t I seen this all somewhere before?’ and you’ll be right. Yes the current Hollywood craze to remake every single film and TV show ever made is still running out of control and here a new sparkly version of 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. The plot is the exactly same - a small group of passengers, including ‘loveable rogue gambler’ Dylan Johns (a smug Josh Lucas) and ex Mayor of New York Robert Ramsey (an earnest Kurt Russell) try to escape from the slowly sinking ship. Also on board but owing to their lack of star power and / or ethnic traits – deemed much more expendable are Elena Gonzalez (a plucky Mía Maestro), downtrodden bellhop Valentin (Freddy Rodríguez) and onboard singer Gloria (Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas).
In fact the only ‘guaranteed to make it out alive or I’ll eat my cinema ticket’ are a pair of young lovers namely Jennifer (the gorgeous when wet Emmy Rossum) and her fiancé Christian (dashing but wimpy Mike Vogel).
It’s all very predictable stuff, with each new scene playing out like a level of a computer game… Obstacles include flash fires, impaling, drowning, falling, overtly rubbish acting – yes I’m looking at you Richard Dreyfuss.
Deep moral dilemmas do pop up like – you’re in an inverted lift shaft struggling to climb up with a Mexican waiter holding onto your leg. The lift starts to fall and threatens to kill you both so do you:
a. Callously kick the waiter off ensuring his certain death but giving you a chance to survive?
or
b. Reluctantly kick the waiter off anyway as he’s only a minor character?
The only real reason to go and see Poseidon is to marvel at the special effects of the AAA nautical destruction, which are quite something to behold.
But if it’s disaster that you’ve got a hankering for, I’d strongly recommend you choose United 93 instead. This powerful retelling of the 4th hijacked plane from the 9/11 tragedy is a pure white-knuckle overdose, made all the more horrific by the fact that it actually happened. In comparison Poseidon’s soggy disasters and plastic characters pale considerably.

Darkmatters rating system (out of 5):

Action ööö – Wet and wonderful in places
Laughs ö – Few and fare between but it's not a comedy!
Horror öö – Not grim enough really
Babes ööö – Emmy 'wears a mean wet dress' Rossum...

Overall öö1/2 (Goes down well but instantly forgettable)


"not bad in the dry either..."

Darkmatters: H O M E