Go down with the ship

"Poseidon" is actually a nifty little action flick. Yes, it's formulaic. Our hero (Josh Lucas) claims to "work better on my own," yet he altruistically guides a crew of hangers on including Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, Richard Dreyfuss and a cute kid out of danger. Plus there are pretty ladies in distress, fakey CGI shots of the ocean liner and painful expositional dialogue (example: "Flash fire. Super heats the air. Burns the lungs like rice paper.") But the film works. The ship goes down, a few passengers decide to get off the sinking vessel and they spend 90 minutes doing just that (with a body count along the way.) It's really all you need.

I found myself physically reacting to the action onscreen. I squirmed in my seat when Josh et al find themselves in a caught in an extremely narrow passage. I felt short of breath every time someone dunked under the water and swam through submerged hallway (I think I might have even held my breath a few times.) Our director, Wolfgang Pedersen, did the same thing to audiences about two decades ago in "Das Boot."

So that's the good that's in there. Let's also mention things that WERENT in the film: a lot of "comic" one-liners, the kid acting sassy and "adorable" for the camera and superfluous romance. Thank you, Wolfgang!

What kind of parent lets their kid run off in the middle of a huge disaster? The kid snuck off two or three times!

I agree that it was a fun movie. But it was a really dumb movie too, so it's worth suspending all plausibility before entering the theater.

Yes, but how does it compare to the Irwin Allen original? (Which is cheese, admittedly, but you usually can't go wrong with Gene Hackman in the lead)