POSEIDON

POSEIDON
By Ken Leicht

The original POSEIDON ADVENTURE was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid but rather than being skeptical, I was excited about the remake. I got a copy of the script early on and was stunned to find that it was quite good. The dialogue and characters were fairly sharp and it read like a cool re-imagining.

Sadly what made it to the screen was a sped up, slimmed down version of what I read, with all of the characterizations removed. One of the things that made the original work was that the characters were all memorable. Here they are just given one or two lines which give some idea of who they are and then it’s all a big race to get off the boat. This task seems remarkably simple for all involved. Despite having no knowledge about ships, they seem to find their way pretty quickly. And when there’s a physical challenge, suddenly everyone is up to it. In the original film, each obstacle was a major thing for frail humans to summon all their courage and strength and get past. Here they just rush right through. The whole film just feels rushed.

While this remake delivers on a modern effects scale, it fails to accomplish what the original did over thirty years ago: give you enough character and suspense to give you a routing interest and give the obstacles that everyone faces a sense of real gravity and danger.

Despite this, I still sort of enjoyed the film because even bad disaster films have their pleasures. I’m just sad because they had a good script dialogue-wise. It’s a pity all of that got thrown overboard and all we’re left with is a big upside down boat. Maybe they should have gone DEEP RISING and thrown in some monsters. Maybe that would have helped.