The Poseidon Adventure (2005)

You wouldn't think that 3 hours of something as iconic as the Poseidon Adventure would be forgettable, but this is.The insertion of a wholly unnecessary (an massively unconvincing) terrorist plot subplot draws attention away from the main course - do our survivors escape? The fact that we don't care very much about the survivors (and particularly about the adultery-and-its-consequences subplot which impinges on a good chunk of them doesn't help).The TV movie budget means that we are never looking at masses of production value on screen, but instead we are looking at very dim lighting to disguise the absence of production budget - OK, I know there wouldn't be much light, but this is ridiculous.And there is too much of it, given that it is plodding and fairly uninteresting a lot of the time.

This film totally lacks the fire of the 1972 original.Rutger Hauer, cast in the Gene Hackman role of the priest, is definitely miscast here. Based on his past performances, you would expect Hauer to be dressed up as a terrorist since a terrorist act has been committed on the boat. That is not the case here. In fact, Hauer lacks the emotional impact of Hackman who questioned his faith after witnessing so many horrors on the boat.The same may be said for Sylvia Syms, who has the Shelley Winters role of Belle Rosen. In this version, Manny Rosen, who was played by Jack Albertson so beautifully in the original, is already dead when the picture begins. Syms gives a totally lackluster performance. Even when she turns over her jewelry to be given to her grandson, there is so little emotion shown.To qualify for the modern scene, this time around a terrorist bomb goes off on the ship creating the havoc. You needed more than that here.

This is a total waste of film and your time. What a dismal attempt to benefit from a classic disaster film. Top 5 reasons this film is a failure. One - Dylan Clarke video taping everything; Two - no real reason for the ship capsizing; Three - Sylvia Syms poor attempt at acting; Four - Amber Sainsbury another sad attempt at acting; Five - all the whimpering. John Putch should have walked away from this film from day one. Alex Kingston needed something to do after her departure from "ER" but this should not have been it. She has the potential to be one of the great dramatic actors of our day and I hope she will get better roles in the future. Dumbest line - "Remember we talked about plan B, this is it. - Alan Baldwin"

Some films that aren't really that bad will receive a rating like this, not because they are horrible in relation to other films of the same rating or better, but because they had so much potential and really not much excuse for failing as a film.This is one of those. A strong cast, a good (remake) concept, plenty of budget- all which leave the viewers with a nagging question, "why did it suck?"It certainly had plenty going for it, which is the main reason I am so disappointed and feel that it deserves a rating of 3 or less. The entire movie is a montage of ripped off scenes from other big budget flicks, and it's almost as if the writers were deliberately trying to flip off the audience by implying they were too dumb to recognize the same scene/situational format from Armageddon, Titanic, hell- even finding Nemo!Maybe they thought a remake didn't warrant a great script, or maybe they were in too much of a hurry to actually come up with their own so they decided "borrow" from other movies. Either way, it's the main reason I gave the movie such a low rating, as it was pretty insulting when the father acknowledges his daughters boyfriend is the one that has to go on a suicide mission to save them all, only to trick the boyfriend and go in his place, so that his daughter wouldn't lose the love of her life. (Gee, reminds me of a certain Bruce Willis/ Ben Affleck scene in Armageddon).This movie has little to offer, other than watching a ship get knocked around and broken up, and some of the drowning scenes are indeed interesting, but overall it didn't deliver.Skip it unless you enjoy made for TV movies.