I had a number of strange feelings going in to see Poseidon at the theaters. Having a child seems to have changed not only the frequency of when I get to the theaters (I'm pretty sure the last film was in January...anyone remember what it was?), but how I react to that experience. Let's focus on feelings watching a movie for a moment before I get into the film itself...
There are only a handful of movie themes that are consistently able to send a chill up (or down) my spine. One of those is Superman's. I had already caught the latest trailer online, but watching it on the big screen in full surround sound got me a bit teary. I can't wait for June 30 to get here.
So I've already had the hairs on my arms standing straight and then the movie starts. Poseidon is being labelled as a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, but it's really more of a re-interpretation. And I really couldn't tell you if that's good or bad (and I've spent the weekend digesting it). Beyond the basic setup of a luxury liner being capsized by a giant wave and a handful of survivors attempting to make their way out, the films have very little in common.
Gone are all the characters from the 1972 classic. There's no Reverend Scott leading the group in hope of actually finding a way out. There's no cop named Mike Rogo trying to get his crass wife Linda out of this new hell they've found. There's no Belle and Manny Rosen trying to fight their way to continue their trip to see their grandchildren. There's no Mr. Martin, no Nonnie, no Acres and no Susan or Robin. In fact, gone is all depth and dimension to any character. There's barely any set up or introduction to the main characters here. and before you know it, the ship gets struck and flips over.
We get bits of info about our "survivors" as they start their journey...but even the start of that journey is so markedly different from the original that it's a bit hard to really care about anyone. In the original film, Reverend Scott is determined to get as many people out as he can. He makes the appeal to everyone trapped in the grand dining room, but winds up with a party of ten (which ultimately gets reduced down to six by the film's end).
Here, we get a selfish single man determined to find his own way out (Josh Lucas plays the part and I'll be damned if I can remember the character's name without looking it up). It's only when others in earshot of the inquiries of a young boy overhear his pleas to Lucas to help him and his mother that Lucas reluctantly takes on travelling companions. Those companions include the young boy and his single mother, an ex-firefighter/former mayor of NYC (Kurt Russell), his daughter and her fiance, a jilted gay architect who was about to throw himself into the ocean when he sees the wave coming (Richard Dreyfus...who I think has less lines in this movie than Jar Jar Binks had in the second Star Wars film..it's a bit obvious he needed rent money), a waiter, a stowaway and a jackass named Lucky Larry (who is pretty much dead meat because of the name).
If there is one thing this film has going in its favor, it is the speed with which it moves. The film runs barely 100 minutes and feels even shorter. Director Wolfgang Petersen has sacrificed any characterization for a series of set pieces that keep everything in motion. But this is also part of the film's oddity in my book. The film is rated PG-13, but I can't remember the last time I was so disturbed by the amount of carnage I've seen on film. Maybe it's a post 9/11 attitude that's welled up inside, but you really do "feel" the enormity of this disaster in the proceedings.
The original, since it was made in the 1970s for around $5 million, didn't quite give you the enormity of the ship (even though it was shot on the Queen Mary), nor did you get the enormity of the devastation (there were bodies here and there as the group makes their journey). This film ups it in spades thru CGI. The ship is enormous. You know just from being in it's lobby. The disaster is even bigger as you see...well...pretty much everything...as the wave hits. The ship lurches people start sliding...both inside and outside the ship. It's very intense...at least I found it so.
It gets even more intense as the film goes along and the survival party drops a few members due to various gruesome demises. If you've got problems with claustrophobia you'll have a hard time with a long scene in an air vent (probably one reason there was no Belle Rosen character here...she never would have fit). And if you thought that Mary Elizabeth Mastratntonio's drowning scene in The Abyss was disturbing, this film's got one on par with that.
I really wanted to like this film. And there's a part of me that does because it's a very well made popcorn flick. But based on its source material, it's hard to deal with little to no characterization. Which brings me back to my initial observation. Being a film filled with cliched characters, we are presented with a precocious little boy who wanders off at the most inopportune moment putting himself and others in more jeopardy than they already are. In the past, this would annoy me because it's cliche and done to provoke an emotion. Having a child of my own and watching the scenes where they look for the little boy hit me a bit too hard and I had a reaction I never really expected to get out of this film. My wife had the same reaction.
We had dropped Malcolm off at his grandparents' for the afternoon while we went to the movie and did some grocery shopping. Once the film was over, neither of us wanted to grow grocery shopping. We just wanted to go get our son and hold him. And that's just what we did.
I'll revisit the film when the DVD comes out (since I'm sure they'll have all the cut scenes that actually gave some depth to everyone) and do a big piece on several incarnations of the story (since it was a book, then a movie, which had a sequel, then two separate musicals, a TV remake and now this big screen remake).
In the meantime, next week are the upfronts from the major TV networks. So I'll start giving my annual reviews/previews of the just ended season and the one that will start this fall...
I'll do my best to keep up, but Sly Fox has one more weekend to go and I'm still trying to catch up on sleep I've missed.
Be seeing you.
No comments:
Post a Comment