Director Wolfgang Petersen must have a fascination for watery disaster flicks. In his native country Germany, he debuted in 1981 with the phenomenal classic "Das Boot" and a mere 20 years later he made the solid and intense "The Perfect Storm", with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Something must have gone wrong after that, because he also considered it a good idea to remake the 1972 disaster movie classic "The Poseidon Adventure". Bad career move, and apparently Petersen still hasn't recovered from this misfire, because he hasn't made another film since. I'm a giant fan of disaster movies from the 70s, notably the Irwin Allen productions, because they were such mastodons with stellar ensemble casts, gigantic and meticulous set designs and old-fashioned but hyper-expensive special effects. The original, directed by Ronald Neame, is a prime example of seventies' disaster extravaganza. I usually don't watch disaster movies that were made after 2000, because I hate computer engineered decors and effects, and for some reason the scripts always contain a lot more redundant melodramatic sub plots than necessary. I also wished I skipped "Poseidon" for the exact same reasons, by the way. The basic plot remains unchanged; - shortly after midnight on the 1st of January, the giant luxury cruiser SS Poseidon capsizes due to an enormous tidal wave. Most of the passengers and crew are trapped in the ballroom/restaurant on the deck, but only a select group is intelligent enough to understand they need to head towards the bottom of the ship since it lies upside down. Their plan works, but the chances of survival are quite slim, as the climb is long and goes via narrow ventilation shafts and watery death traps. I tried not to get annoyed by the computer animation, because I knew that from beforehand, but there were various other awful aspects to get upset about. The script contains so many dumb errors; I almost couldn't believe my eyes! For example, near the end, a mother suddenly loses her 9-year-old for no apparent reason. One moment they are all together, and the next he's stuck in a slowly flooding cage while the rest sees an opportunity to escape. What happened, he just decided to go for a little walk all by himself? All the lead and supportive characters are implausible and deeply unlikable. That was also the case in the original, but at least they were charismatic. There aren't any performances here like the ones given by Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters or Ernest Borgnine in 1972. Instead we're stuck with a washed-up Kurt Russell, an uninterested Richard Dreyfuss and a pitiable Kevin Dillon whose 'Lucky Larry' character is a complete travesty.

Have you seen it? No? There is likely a very good reason for that...it stinks.Like nearly ALL the endless remakes and reboots that have been plaguing movie goers for the past decade or so....all this is, is a heartless version of the original.It has no heart.It has no soul.It is a retelling of a film that we all love and cherish...and it adds nothing to the story. It improves nothing but the special effects--which held up very well over time--and in some cases belittles the fans of the original...particularly in the fact that they remade the movie at all, without adding anything clever to it.Like so many other remakes it is a hallow shell of the original.

What do you need to make a truly bad movie? Well, first, a great cast - Josh Lucas as Dylan Johns Kurt Russell as Robert Ramsey Emmy Rossum as Jennifer Ramsey Mike Vogel as Christian Sanders Jacinda Barrett as Maggie James Richard Dreyfuss as Richard Nelson Mía Maestro as Elena Morales Jimmy Bennett as Connor James Kevin Dillon as Lucky Larry Freddy Rodriguez as Marco Valentin Andre Braugher as Captain Michael Bradford Stacy Ferguson as Gloria Kirk B. R. Woller as Chief Officer Reynolds Gabriel Jarret as First Officer Chapman Then, make it a remake - and this is the main problem, probably. Remakes are often a disaster, here it is a bad try, too. Only the very moment of a catastrophe is worth watching, but then neither Kurt Russell, not Jacinda Barrett can save this sad, slow, plodding steamroller of a bad film. You can watch it, yeah, but then this is all you can do.

As far as entertainment goes this is pretty much perfect. It's exciting, thrilling, intense & generally fairly well-acted. The Poseidon (like the original) has a no nonsense approach to film-making. We aren't giving a long boring introduction before the disaster occurs so whatever you may be feeling whilst the film is rolling it won't be boredom. However....The only big difference (and slight problem) with this remake is that its weaker in terms of character development and characterisation. The original seemed to manage to develop a few of the characters enough for us to care about them, but at the same time without drawing this element out for too long. In this remake, character development is overlooked meaning that you never care as much for these characters than you did for the characters in the original. In the original, the characters also felt more believable - quarrelling & general indecisiveness are much more believable character traits when you look at their predicament. However, in this remake Lucas just decides everything without anyone questioning him - how much better would it have been if there had been a power struggle between Lucas and Russell like there was between Borgnine and Hackman in the original? Other problems in this remake is that you quite simply don't care about the characters as much; I think the main reason for this is that the writers don't seem to care about the characters either. In the original film when someone died there was something made of it and again the characters were written in a way that made you care. In this film when a character dies, the writers just swiftly move on without a second's thought - the worse example of this was when Kurt Russell's character dies and no-one even bothers to go and look for him and nothing is really mentioned about his disappearance (they assume he's dead, but don't know it). How awful is that? You always got the feeling that they were a real team in the original and you could never imagine anyone leaving anyone else behind. It's a shame that the characterisation was so poor because other than that there's very little wrong with this film.On my real world scale this probably only deserves a 6, but I've given it a 7 because despite some of its flaws it is a very exciting and intense piece of cinema that will guarantee not to bore you. I believe with slightly better writing and characterisation that this could have been every bit as good as the original. However, considering it's a remake of a classic it really isn't that bad.