On New Year's Eve, the luxury cruise ship Poseidon is hit by an enormous wave that flips it upside-down stranding thousands of passengers underwater. A group of passengers join together to try to escape the ship.
The original Poseidon was decent disaster film. It had engaging characters, decent special effects and a cheesy storyline. The remake is more or less the same minus the interesting characters, charm and suspense. Okay, the remake did have a few suspenseful scenes though nothing very memorable or original. The reason why the film wasn't very suspenseful was because the characters were all one dimensional and dull. There was no character development at all so it was hard to care for these people. While watching the movie, it's just easier to refer to them as generic titles like "the old guy" or something. Actually, if you use this method then you can probably figure out who will die and in what order they will die.
The acting is very weak and unconvincing. Josh Lucas is an okay actor but he wasn't very good here. He just didn't make a good hero nor was his character very likable. Kurt Russell was okay, nothing special. Emmy Rossum was terrible as Jennifer. Her performance felt so forced and over the top. The way she expressed her emotions just looked so fake and unconvincing. Jimmy Bennett was just annoying as Conor. Richard Dreyfuss was very misused and his character seemed out of place. Jacinda Barrett gives a laughable performance, it was just very poor. I should warn you (or comfort you?) that Stacy Ferguson from the Black Eyed peas is only in the movie for about 10 minutes, maybe a little less.
When judged as a disaster film, Poseidon is actually pretty decent. The special effects were great though 160 million was obviously just a bit too much. Wolfgang Petersen is really good at making a film appear stylish including the ship which looked amazing. His storytelling skills aren't as good though. The combination of a weak script didn't help matters either. The movie was just too corny at times for my taste. For example, there was once scene where Josh Lucas was planning to escape the ballroom and one by one, the rest of the characters just come up and ask to come along. It was just a bit too obvious and they should have handled it differently. I also thought it was kind of dumb that all the characters were able to hold their breath underwater for large amounts of time. Despite these flaws, there were a few engaging scenes and some touching moments. Also, the movie is pretty short so it's not really too much of a pain to sit through. This helped the experience a little though I wouldn't have minded a longer movie. In the end, Poseidon may not be worth checking out in theaters but it should make for a decent rental. Rating 6/10
