Eye Candy #459 - "Poseidon"

Poseidon: I will freely admit that I have never seen the original “Poseidon Adventure” in all my movie viewing (I’ve also never seen “Gone with the Wind”, which is apparently heretical, since I talk about movies so much), but I was in the mood for some mindless silly Hollywood violence and implausible action set pieces, so into the queue at Netflix it went.  The plot - this is the film the ship tourism industry doesn’t want you to see - the ocean liner Poseidon is struck by a rogue wave that topples the ship, making the bottom the top and the top the bottom. Because most boats (I would gather almost all boats) are not built to float upside down, some hardy survivors (led by Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas) decide they need to find a way out and proceed to make their way through the ship to the bottom and what is hoped to be safety. Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers that survived decide to hole up in the giant ballroom...that’s lined with big glass windows...that’s underwater...and well, you know that just isn’t a formula for a happy ending for those characters. And considering the escaping passengers led by Lucas and Russell indirectly contribute to the deaths of the other passengers because of their own actions (they set off an accidental explosion, which is one of the factors leading to the other passengers getting killed).  This film is short. The boat is flipped within the first ten minutes, the decision to move out two minutes after that, and they are out of the boat right around 90 minutes. In between, there is a lot of fire, water, burnt corpses, floating corpses, you get the picture. The problem is the time it takes the film to unwind you really don’t have the time to get to know the character, care about them, or give a @#%$ who lives or who dies. The film is too fast for its own good. The special effects are fine, but we all know that special effects don’t make the movie.  Okay, Hollywood, please stop churning out unnecessary remakes. If you can’t find an original idea in your heads, go out and pay for one from somebody else. This regurgitation @#%$ is getting old and you’re doing it badly (with the exception of a zombie movie, most of the Hollywood remakes of recent memory have been extremely tepid).  Woodchuck sez, "Skip it."