Poseidon (2006)
“…these boats weren't designed to float upside down”
Back in the dark ages of the 1970s, disaster pictures were a thing. Irwin Allen and others put their great grandchildren through college with flicks like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake, while by 1980 they became material for comedies like Airplane!
One of the coolest movies to come out of that era was a gem called The Poseidon Adventure. Poseidon is The Poseidon Adventure….all dressed up for a new (in 2006) generation of moviegoers.
This review is a good example of what we talk about when we say there are spoilers and then there are Spoilers. A Spoiler is telling you that Baby Yoda is the love child of Princess Leia and Jabba the Hut (as if you didn’t know). We don’t do those. But if something takes place in the first five minutes of the movie, is in its title (I’m talking to you Invisible Man), or on the movie poster, we don’t feel bad about talking about it.
Poseidon is about a big honking boat that capsizes and a handful of people who have to make their way up to the bottom of the boat to escape.
Like the the 70s movie it is based on, this one involves a handful of unlikely survivors forced to work together to make it out of a doomed ship. The group includes Kurt Russell (a former firefighter and mayor of New York), Josh Lucas (a gambler named Dylan), Richard Dreyfus (an architect and the guy who notes that upside down boats don’t float too well), and Jacinda Barrett as a mom (we never learn much more about her).
There are a bunch of others, including Mia Maestro, Mike Vogel, Freddy Rodriguez, Emmy Rossum, and Kevin Dillon, but - to be frank - most of the cast get blown up, electrocuted, drown, or crushed by giant gumballs (errr….Spoiler?) so character development isn’t all that big a thing in this movie. You get just enough of a postcard for each to know who they are before something horrible happens to them.
Despite most of the characters having a shelf life shorter than week old tuna, the acting is pretty good. Russell and Lucas have a believable bromance, Dillion is two dimensional - but a lot of fun, and Dreyfus reminds us that he is a no kidding real actor who can turn a role as an old toaster into something watchable.
The effects are also pretty good. In some respects I prefer the ones in the original, but these sets look great and the flashes and bangs are all suitably flashy and bangy.
The movie is also true to the storyline of the Poseidon Adventure and many of the scenes and some dialog are complete lifts. If you haven’t seen the original it will pass right by you and if you have, its effect is more nostalgic than annoying.
Poseidon won’t (and didn’t) receive any big awards, but it is a perfectly watchable popcorn flick when you want to get your Saturday Night Drive-In fix.
You can catch a ride on Poseidon HERE.
A solid Two out of Five Rogue Waves.
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Have a favorite disaster flick? Let us know and we’ll give it a watch.
Post Credit Bonus!
We originally planned to run this as a Hollywood Haiku, but it was a better fit for a Saturday Night Drive-In review…but we still have the Haiku, so rather than let it go to waste:
The king of the sea
Rogue wave and upside down world
Climb to the bottom
