2/4  Poseidon Quick Review
A mediocre remake to a classic blockbuster. This seemed to rely on special effects and action sequences than character and plot. Kurt Russell seemed to give an okay performance.

2.5/4  Poseidon Quick Review
This was pretty intense and scary for younger kids (even 12 year olds). Overall a decent adventure but not fabulous.

3/5 Where's an Ernest Borgnine or Stella Stevens when ya need one?
  by Reginald D. Garrard (Camilla, GA USA)
WARNING: SPOILERS!!

Yes, I'm a fan of the original Irwin Allen film.
Yes, I have been on a couple of cruises.
Yes, I have seen James Cameron's "Titanic".
Yes, I can hum "The Morning After."

With those facts behind me, I can now embark on my take on Wolfgang Peterson's retelling of the '72 disaster classic.

Shortening the original by almost an hour, Peterson's version delves sparingly into the lives of the stars and "dives" headfirst into the "adventure" for survival. Perhaps, by having two familiar faces, Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss, the director wants the audience to fill in the blanks about their respective characters. Russell's is possibly an extension of the character that he played in "Backdraft" inasmuch as in this film he's a former New York firefighter turned mayor; Dreyfus is, perhaps, "Matt Hooper" from "Jaws," after the great white scared him out of the closet. Both actors didn't seem to stretch their acting muscles much in this film.

As far as the rest of the cast is concerned, Josh Lucas's "reformation" from professional gambler to savior of the group is almost believable, considering the predicament in which the survivors find themselves. Though he has more lines than original "captain" Leslie Neilson, Andre Braugher doesn't get too much screen time and "goes down with the ship,"...literally.

Because of the brevity of character development, the rest of the cast is filled out with your basic stereotypes: the single mom and son (Jacinda Barrett and Jimmy Bennett), the young couple (Emmy Rossum and Mike Vogel), the stowaway (Mia Maestro), the wise-ass (Kevin Dillon), and the noble crewman (Freddy Rodriquez).

The special effects are indeed spectacular but more than thirty years have passed since the first film and it's logical that there would be an improvement in that area. However, the first one benefited from having characters of whom the audience could connect. By going "straight for the jugular" with the massive effort spent on CGI effects and stuntwork, Peterson has crafted a nice-looking package but with nothing inside.

And even the original had a nifty John Williams' score; Klaus Bedelt's does not compare, even to his own superlative score to the hit "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

The film does have one great bonus: the sinking of the ship at the film's end. That is a most likely occurence, considering the massive damage inflicted on the ship by the "rogue wave."

3/5 No Shelly Winters, Pamela Sue Martin or Ernest Borgnine in this one!
  by M. J Leonard (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States)
Director Wolfgang Peterson seems to be in such a terrible hurry with Poseidon - everything moves at such a fast pace that the characters - and the viewers - rarely have enough time to stop for a mouthful of air. And while the movie campy fun and as suspenseful as the original 1972 Poseidon Adventure, the film is certainly short and most definitely to the point.

In this remake you see lots of extras die as their world is turned upside down one New Year's Eve, with little warning once the "rogue wave" is sighted and heads towards the doomed luxury liner. Overcome by flooding, shorting electricity and baked by flash fires, the expendable masses yield with barely more than a shocked glimpse, hands clapped over mouths and last-minute hugs with total strangers.

As the Disco and swimming pool, galleys and grand suites and of course the grand ballroom go belly-up, there's the bunch of heroic characters that defy the Captain and decide to head-onward and upward through the waterlogged, overturned ship in feats that call for a deep-sea suspension of disbelief. No matter, because the delectable Josh Lucas leads this eclectic, mismatched gang, and wouldn't you follow him!

Alas, there's no Shelly Winters-like character in this version. The protagonists all come across, as rather nameless and faceless, blandness is the order of the day here. Kurt Russell plays a devoted father, and the ex-Mayor of New York, Richard Dreyfuss is lamenting being dumped by his boyfriend, Josh Lucas is a gambler and I think a fireman - which is why of course he knows the workings of the luxury liner backwards.

Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mia Maestro, Mike Vogel and Kevin Dillon round at the crowd. And they all have remarkably strong lung capacity, considering how long they have to spend underwater! But it doesn't really matter who's who, or who will sink or swim because once the ship flips, character development isn't high on the list of this movie's agenda.

Obviously the special effects are what it's all about and there's tons and tons of rushing water, exploding electrical circuits, people caught in air-conditioning shafts and being burnt to death by sudden fires - it's all big and loud and contains some expert stunt work and superb integration of digital technology.

The direction is mostly crisp and although it all gets a bit repetitious towards the end - it also becomes hard to figure out what is going on - the film mostly works because it steps up its dramatic speed early on, and its pacing never falters. Mike Leonard August 06.


5/5 Violent, strong and quite extraordinary
  by - Kasia S. (New York City)
Honestly I didn't even want to go see Poseidon because of the insanely negative reviews it got, but I went only because my boyfriend begged me to see it with him. I was lucky to have seen it on the IMAX screen, and for $15 per ticket I must say that it was worth it!

The movie starts out with gorgeous sweeping angels with the most majestic music that berated into the wide open surface of the ocean around the cruise ship. It starts off fast and there is no sitting around and waiting for something to happen. About ten minutes into the movie I was actually pissed at myself for almost missing it and the scenes in front of my eyes went from wild to insane.

This movie is extremely graphic to say the least. Except for some really dark war movies I have never seen people die and get hurt in so many ways to the point where the realistic portrayal knocked the wind out of my lungs. I felt as if I was there, tumbling with the ship hit by a rough wave exactly on midnight on new years ever. Watching the ship go from wild turning to being turned upside down, having the fuel leak and explode, the rooms fill with ocean water, people flying and dying right and left looked like some crazy National Geographic disaster special. I couldn't believe how hard the struggle for a small group of passengers was as they were going back to the bottom of the boat, now facing up, trying with all they had for a chance to jump into the bottomless black ocean.

This reminded me of the Titanic, and the characters were fresh and modern, they struggled and sacrificed honor and lives, and they took us with them thorough the intestines of the ship. Kurt Russell has always been one of my favorites and his determination and strength were quite powerful in this movie as he and a group or random people reached to the ends of their sanity and physical strength to move forward. Pinocchio sure made escaping out of a whale look a lot easier then escape from the Poseidon was.

Overall I loved this movie yet it was terrifying because it threw human mortality and fragility right in front of the viewer. I do not think I could have survived going through what these people went through and that was sad and scary. Really good movie, bit sad, bit heart warming and definitely very intense.

And on the end note the music in the movie was staggering and breathtaking; it gave this movie such layers of depth that I got goose bumps from the first minute upon hearing it.

3/5 Whatever floats your boat.
  by ajsteele
Big fan of the original. So, my anticipation was naturally at a peak when I was finally going to see a hopeful intergration of filmaking. I knew modern effects would be outstanding without even seeing it. I dont know why many of the reviews are putting an enphasis on that as if it wasnt expected. Yes, the old school acting was missing. There was passion in trying to escape, but the interaction of confusion, anger and pure uncertainty was not present. Fortunately, the level of fear was maintained solidly to somewhat compensate. I wasnt expecting a duplicate of the original, but a few more connections would have been nice along with a cameo or trivia point. The charactors where very thin and I believe the movie was way to short. The onset of the wave came too fast and much development was lacking in relation to the captain and his crew. Finding others in another area of the ship would have added to the film, with their eventual peril of course. Richard Dreyfus shaking off a passenger from his leg was a frightening touch, but I feel is a reflection of our current society. When "Chris" says to his girl , "I need you to tell me you love me", I thought I was watching acting from Night of the Living Dead, very empty. I thought the film was a bit overly dark at times. On the plus side the film started to get a good feel to as the water rushed in. Looking at the flipped ship was spectacular and realism took hold watching the constant electrical problems. The sound was awesome(if you have a good system). In a big scope way I was pulled in enough to enjoy the excitement . Filmmaker Peterson needed to realize that there was more then the rush to escape from the original. The rush was there and well done, but that extra of feeling the charactor and his bitterness was near nil. Works on some levels, refer to my title.

3/5 A bland, wholly unnecessary remake of the original classic
  by Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)
Whereas The Poseidon Adventure (the 1972 original classic) focused on the characters trying to survive the upside-down-ship-sinking disaster, this incredibly unnecessary remake merely uses its characters for a good excuse to put a lot of cool special effects together and call it a film. To play these characters, the filmmakers assembled some of my least favorite actors in the world (e.g., Richard Dreyfuss, Kurt Russell). Fortunately, though, the cast includes the angelic Emmy Rossum, who looks extremely good wet, I must say (especially from certain camera angles). Josh Lucas is actually quite good in his role, although his sudden transformation from a guy who cares only about saving himself to full-fledged, selfless hero is problematic, and I guess you're supposed to pull for the kid to survive, but none of these characters really matter all that much. You would think this kind of life-threatening ordeal would endear the characters to us, but that just doesn't happen. Why develop characters when you can just keep blowing things up? That seems to be the filmmakers' philosophy here.

You already know the story. A rogue wave comes up and knocks the cruise liner Poseidon all the way over, leaving a small group of characters to defy the captain's ill-advised instructions and head upward to try and find a way out through the bottom of the ship. They face all kinds of deadly obstacles on their way, from rising water (duh) to live wires to flash fires and explosions, etc. Some make it, some don't, but it's not like you actually care about any of them. The only thing resembling a subplot involves Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), and Jennifer's young suitor (Mike Vogel), who hasn't really gained the old man's trust as of yet. Dreyfuss' character is gay for no apparent reason, and we learn next to nothing about the other main characters. Basically, this film has the kind of script that could easily have been written on a napkin during some writer's lunch meeting with the director.

The CGI-laded special effects are pretty good (albeit excessive), but it's just a mistake to build a film around the special effects. I certainly appreciate the filmmakers going to so much trouble to make the climactic first few minutes of the capsizing surprisingly graphic and as real as possible, but it would have served the film well to devote some of that same passion to the weak script. As it is, the film - like the ship itself - sinks more and more with each passing minute.