Poseidon
If you have any more expectations than a big, whiz-bang spectacle out of this movie, then you will be sorely disappointed. If you are willing and eager to see spectacular set pieces and acts of derring-do, without all that character junk muddying the waters, then come, come to Poseidon on the big screen. (Otherwise, rent it.) They may have taken the Adventure out of the title, but that is actually all they left in the movie.
Thanks to a century of filmmaking tradition, the archetypes that make up the band of folks trying to survive this disaster are sketched quickly for us (with a few flourishes added later as they get to know each other as well) so we can get on with the tumping of the cruise liner. Despite a century of filmmaking tradition and a solid 15 years of computer effects R&D, the digital effects in this film were actually quite bad. Not Mummy bad, but pretty bad. James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic has better CG work - how can the three zillion credit effects houses have not at least met that bar? We suspected it was a summer intern project.
I’ll tell you what, though, all the analog effects are fantastic! The gimbaled set, the rushing water (when it wasn’t digitized), the fire and people and bodies and flotsam and - wow! Every scene is just another reason to worship director Wolfgang Petersen’s ability to assemble an artistic team and make the world he is shooting in really feel real. The chaos is great, the extras give a strong sense of their experience. Of our intrepid band of heroes, Mia Maestro’s Elena is the one character whose performance really gave us a sense of the danger and panic that any normal person would have. I’m not slagging on Lucas or Russell or Rossum or any of the other folks, but Elena was the most richly drawn stick figure in the whole movie.
Basically, it is what it is, and if you want the old-school pleasures of just seeing pure adventure and spectacle (and some deviation from the original in terms of who lives and who dies and so forth), then by all means, plop your popcorn bag down in your lap and have a ball. However, if you are hoping for the same reaction you had when Shelly Winters heroically sacrificed herself in the original, you’re not going to get it. And this film won’t get the acting accolades the original got in 1973 from the BAFTAs and Golden Globes and Oscars; it’s not the actors’s fault, it’s just not an actor-centric movie. The main character, which is the perilous bowels of the doomed ship, is diva enough; and when she isn’t being digitized back to the stone age, she is sincerely pretty amazing to look at.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 5/12/06
Time in minutes 99
Director Wolfgang Petersen
Studio Warner Brothers
