Movie Natters: March 28, 2006 Archive

Signs of age and deja vu

Posted at 3:12 PM on March 28, 2006 by Euan Kerr (3 Comments)

At a local cineplex recently, the rash of trailers included one where a succession of stars board a luxury liner, which you know can only bode ill for the benighted boat. Sure enough a huge wave hit soon after, flipping the ship like a bathtoy.

It was about then that I realized I saw this movie 25 years ago. Someone's remade "The Poseidon Adventure!" Now it's just called "Poseidon," but it seems to be the same movie! As the trailer continued I recognized scene after scene, including all that stuff with the chandeliers, culminating with one guy taking a do-or-die swan dive from several upside-down stories up. The faces have changed, no Shelly Winters this time round, but the movie seems much the same.

Remakes are a fact of film life, but does recreating the thrills that drew the crowds first time round mean we have to see the exact same film? It'll do well no doubt, but it's creating an uncomfortable sense of deja vu for me.

What really worried me then was we might soon be seeing "Towering Inferno" again, or even "Earthquake" with the vibrating seat gizmos. That was hard enough the first time round.

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