Poseidon: A $140 Million Dollar Floating Turd

A story about an ocean liner that is out at sea on New Year’s Eve and is struck by an enormous 150 foot rogue wave and is left upside down in the ocean. The captain and crew warn everyone to stay in the dance hall and wait for help, but a few wary passengers take flight to try to escape the doomed ship. They have to beat the rising water to the ships hull where they hope there will be a method of escape. Will the make it out of the ship before it sinks and carries them to a watery death, or will they make their way through the maze of upside down ship and escape to the surface.

A remake of the popular The Poseidon Adventure (1972), this remake doesn’t compare to the original, which most remakes don’t but this one wasn’t even close. This movie had all the makings of a great film, a great director (Wolfgang Petersen) with a budget of $140 million dollars. A cast that includes Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss two Hollywood legends, and up and coming Hollywood star Josh Lucas. But all of these factors can’t save a movie that has a horrible script and sketchy plot.

First when the ship capsizes Richard Dreyfuss exclamates to the small group that plans to escape (who I should add don’t offer to help anyone else escape) that he is an engineer and boats weren’t meant to stay afloat upside down. Really is that why I often times see boats right side up Richard? Is that why I rarely see someone on the hull of their boat floating along carelessly in the ocean? I don’t think you need to be an engineer to know this fact, but thanks for proving that $140 million won’t buy any good writing.

Another great addition is when Josh Lucas and crew are starting their escape they end up climbing an elevator shaft. Where of course something causes the elevator to fall as a group is clinging to the edge of the shaft trying to escape the falling elevator. Lucas is holding Dreyfuss and a waiter (who told them the way to go to escape) is on Dreyfuss’s leg begging to be saved. So what does decorated navy man Lucas do, does he risk his life and save the men, no he tells Dreyfuss to kick the waiter off and let him die. That is the navy spirit screw all others I just want to live.

So what else happens in this movie, it’s not really worth talking about so I will sum it up for you. They start to escape, come across a drunk who is a jerk, he dies in 5 minutes, Lucas jumps into firey water to save some people (he flip flops back and fourth from murderer to hero a lot), they keep getting into situations where they nearly drown, but narrowly escape death. They try to swim a long corridor and one fo the women gets her pants got stuck, she drowns, a kid wanders off (and if it was me I would have left him) Lucas saves him (again with the saving we already know he isn’t a hero don’t try to convince me now). Spoilers warning – to save the others Kurt Russell swims a 200 yard shaft to a button he must push to stop the propellers and save everyone, he drowns. The button pushed actually makes the propellers rotate the opposite direction, Lucas throws something in they stop and they escape. The whole movie sucked and was a waste of an hour and a half and $7.

Don’t see this movie unless you like multi-million dollar pieces of crap.