This turned up on one of the more obscure film channels and instantly thought I was going to be watching the 2006 remake of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE only to find out relatively late that this is a Hallmark production no doubt produced to tie in with the big budget remake , a sort of cynical marketing ploy used by The Asylum company and their infamous " mockbusters " . I'll say one thing about Hallmark and that is no one is capable of making a film as bad as the ones at The Asylum . However we are talking about a very well regarded disaster movie from the 1970s and that alone may come close to cinematic blasphemy . After seeing the whole TVM I'm afraid Hallmark have done their level best to make a shipwreck of a movie Being effectively a three hour miniseries the producers have split the story in to two halves , one setting up the characters and backstory and the second half featuring the disaster of a capsized ship . Watching the first half you're not reminded of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE but that most dreadful and twee of American comedies THE LOVE BOAT . Most of the characters are looking for either romance or success where as the relatively big name actors playing them should have started looking for a new agent circa 1990 . The actresses seem to be slightly more fortunate since they've seemingly found a plastic surgeon , but the trouble is he wasn't a very good one who seems to have a fetish for botox . Honestly I'm not trying to get a cheap laugh but more than a few women seen here look like they're emulating waxworks and I'm not just referring to to the wooden acting Being a TVM means that it's family friendly fare . This means for the sake of audience identification we've got a little irritating kid as a relatively major figure . He also spends much of he first half of the story hanging around with one of the crew filming home made vampire movies in dark remote spots of the ship without any hint of an adult having an unhealthy interest in children . This jars greatly with one of the main aspect of the story where the cause of the ship capsizing is by an act of cold blooded terrorism. When the bombs explode and the terrorists start murdering the ship's crew it's almost like watching another film . That said after watching something that resembles THE LOVE BOAT I started thinking perhaps the terrorists were the good guys

First of all, let me just say people overreact ridiculously to this film. I've seen it a number of times in the past few years, so I know it well enough to know it isn't the worst film in the world. However, that's not to say it isn't bad, or isn't laughable at times. This is one of those films that's fun to put on on one of those "curl up on the couch and watch a bad movie" sort of day.For those familiar with the classic disaster film "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) or the most recent remake "Poseidon" (2006), it's the same story - on New Years Eve, a cruise ship capsizes while hundreds of people celebrate the holiday in the ship's ballroom. A group of them decide that, instead of sitting and waiting for help, to climb up, through, and find a way out of the ship before it sinks would be the smarter idea. The original film was a massive smash hit that can be claimed to be the "classic" disaster film. Sure, there were disaster films before that, but the original film is what set the genre in motion. Certainly without it, films like "The Towering Inferno", "Titanic", "The Day After Tomorrow" might not have never existed.So what do we have here? Like most NBC projects, you've got a great idea, a decent cast who desperately needs direction, yet you hire a terrible director and an even worse screenwriter. I'm going to start and say this - the writing in this film is an absolute joke. It's hard to believe that, at some points, the director didn't have scenes cut or the studio didn't step in and stop things from going bad to worse.There's a hilarious attempt at "realism" here. The original film has the ship capsizing due to a massive tsunami wave - unlikely, yes, but explained well enough so it's passable. But this... I'm not sure why they did what they did here. Instead of a massive wave, it's a terrorist attack. Stay with me here - terrorists are working on the ship and have bombs hidden in kegs of beer, yet only one bomb detonates on one side of the ship, and we get a bunch of bull---t science exposition about how it "can happen" even though it'd be obvious to an eight grade student it can't happen. This idea backfired sharply.We've actually got some veteran actors here, and some aren't bad. Rutger Hauer, who does well with what he's given. Adam Baldwin shows his teeth a lot. Steve Guttenberg being Steven Guttenberg. Alexa Hamilton gives everyone bizarre looks as she turns her head slowly (about eight times in the film). C. Thomas Howell, however, is the most natural at what he's given and does fine. The younger actors, however, are literally CRYING for some direction here, but it's like the director is just sitting back and eating a taco while watching his film sink. It's awful to see at parts. The characterization... wow. Not only are the majority of characters uninteresting, the ones that have potential to be interesting are either annoying, one-dimensional, or begin to do things that have no real purpose. None of the characters ever act like they're in a disaster. It just seems like they're going through a haunted house at Six Flags. Belle Rosen starts nearly every sentence she says with "My husband Manny..." and goes to worship him like he's the sun god or something. The good characters are good, the bad characters are bad, and there's very little in between.And for a disaster film, there's no tension or horror. It's really, really easy to figure out who's going to get killed off in the main group - character's with few lines, or with little to do. It's really as if they had little left to do with the characters and just killed them off for the "shock value", but considering they die and no one ever mentions them again, it's a bit pointless. We also, for the first time, get to see the rescue operations taking place outside of the ship. This adds an extra 20 minutes in run-time with a bunch of characters we don't care about (but they try to get us to) and takes away any mystery if there's help outside of the ship. A big plus the 1972 film had was that it focused on what was happening inside the ship and only that - we had no idea if there was help outside at all. Was it all worth it in the end? Did it all come to a dead end? , in this film, you KNOW who's going to live and who's going to die. NO risks are taken.Now don't get me wrong, this film does have quite a bit of positive aspects to it. For a TV miniseries, the effects are quite good. Surprisingly good in some scenes, in fact (and surprisingly bad in other scenes - it's odd). The set pieces are well done, such as the ballroom and some other places. A lot of it seems to be like they modeled after Cruise Ship Tycoon or something, but it's passable. There's also some clever references to the original novel here that other films haven't done yet, and some subtle references to the original film that make Poseidon fans a bit more excited. Some scenes are even very well acted and well done. The capsizing scene is quite effective as well, though a bit silly at times. Give credit where credit is due.Overall, is it good? No. Perhaps slightly enjoyable. Such a thing is rare, considering this film is pretty much hated among both the Poseidon fan community and just humankind in general, but it's fun to watch every now and again. It's quite a good lesson to aspiring filmmakers on how not to make a disaster movie.5/10

"Let's give a big Poseidon welcome," ...to this feeble turd.My mouth was hanging open. This is like a crappy movie-making master-class. OK for starters, the project is immediately being yanked in two directions - It's a grandiose, money-devouring adventure, but they'd prefer not to spend more than $12.99 on any sequence. It's supposed to be an exciting, dynamic movie but the creators heads are stuck in static, made-for-TV mode. Every second of this smells like cost-cutting. They even split the original one-two punch of the ship rolling, followed quickly by the ballroom flooding into two moments hours apart not because the narrative is improved, but to pad things.In terms of style, it doesn't have a casual or natural idea in it's three hour running time. Whatever is happening on screen is overtly introduced, and hierarchically approved by a team that is most pleased with themselves when the resulting footage is inert and generic. i.e. If you're tired of limp duct-escape sequences, somehow this move found a way to make them staler AND duller. You know something is wrong from the get-go because you're looking at some of the ugliest Bo-Rics hairstyles you've ever seen. It's like the make-up team under financial pressure gave up the fight and just told everyone to do their own hair. And there's a team of haggard looking actors who haven't had work in ten years. (Gutenberg, Hauer, C. Thomas Howell). My apologies to Adam Baldwin who is better than this. Peter Weller is looking more like Richard Widmark than anyone expected. Gutenberg is morphing into 70s actor David Groh. 40 minutes into it, it still hasn't started. An hour is gone and wasted before the show even gets rolling. Newsflash - No one tuned in for the characters or the plot. They've got the wrong look for the visuals. The initial night-shot of the ship looks like it was designed for a cruise commercial not a movie about a ship. We don't need a nineteenth flyover shot of the overturned hull. (Half the CGI budget must've been spent on these) We could sure use some thrills though. At one point there's even a ridiculous 5 second cutaway to a crappy CGI satellite (a box with lights flashing), because someone sends a fricking e-mail. I mean, really...This made-for-TV movie has a box that says WIDESCREEN edition on it (um. OK.) which it's not. This is a head-scratching lie which can only be attributed to deliberately tricking viewers into renting this, thinking they're getting the big screen remake.Thrill-proof. I've never been happier to have a F-Fwd button.

This appeared at first to be a joke. But I realized quickly that I was laughing for the wrong reasons. I critiqued another stupid remake recently (I can't remember which), but that one was actually so bad it was funny. This remake only took some of the story from the original and added a bunch of crap (I wish I could use that other word). The scenes that were copied from the original had no soul, no feeling, and just flowed past like people waiting in line at a urinal. The characters were dull and looked quite bored, except Steve. He looked like a desperate actor who paid to get his role in this movie so he could over-act. He might have unintentionally made some people laugh. I laughed a bit, but it wasn't happy laughter. It was absolutely disgusted laughter. As others here have said, the scenes outside of the ship killed any tension that might have helped this movie. A not quite white person being made into a terrorist (probably from the middle east) is one more example of racist Hollywood. Why does Hollywood almost always cast people with a particular physical racial look as being terrorists? The incredibly honorable military saviors from outside of the ship were obviously tools of propaganda for increasing the giving of our tax-dollars to the weapons industry. The moral majority must have also had a hand in this production, since the good looking blond who had sex with Steve's character dies in the symbolic "FIRES OF HELL". Of course, Steve doesn't join her there, since he now cares about 'family values'. He's the adulterer, but only the woman suffers the penalty, from our vengeful God. I'll summarize quickly. Realism is not there. How much can anyone enjoy a movie (that's already been made and is a classic) about natural disaster and people struggling to survive it, being remade into a movie about a terrorist disaster with a bunch of soul-free people, only a few being saved by our strong military. And, who would really care about any of the characters in this movie? Can Hollywood sink any lower.....Oh boy.... I shouldn't ask that. You know they will.