Poseidon

Bigger, noisier and in a way, nastier than the original. Few films can have wallowed quite so much in human destruction. The big set-piece effects will be worth the price of the ticket for most, but I found that the inner environment of the overturned ship gets a bit samey as the various stock situations are ticked-off.

Whereas The Poseidon Adventure built up the characters along the way, Wolfgang das Boot Peterson's re-make shows signs at the outset of wanting to take some time to establish the key players before the "rogue wave" hits. This early promise is entirely squandered however, and amongst the survivors at the end are some entirely pointless characters that have barely said or done anything since disaster struck to merit either our interest or concern. (e.g. Maggie.)

How the heck does Richard Dreyfus get to survive? In the absence of any African Americans to provide obvious clues as to who might not make it, we supposed this gay "divorcee" was there to fly the flag for minority interest. Oddly, he also seems to be the only 'old' person on the cruise ship!

Early on there appeared to be an opportunity to add some edge to his relationship with Elena (played by argie Mía Maestro) as he had just shaken her boyfriend off the end of his leg, but when the subject comes up she doesn't seem even vaguely interested in whether poor old Valentino is still alive. Elena was however the one (female) character it was possible to take an interest in, and both Surfer and I admitted to diminished attention after her sad demise. As for Kevin Dillon's Lucky Larry, he practically had "count me down..." written on his forehead.

The scene that has always stuck with me from Christmas re-runs of The Poseidon Adventure is the one where the group encounters a line of survivors shuffling "the wrong way" along the capsized liner. This updated bunch pass many a charred corpse, but there's not a peep out of any of them!

One of the previews was for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, scheduled for release once all the football finishes. It looks much more Disneyfied than the first film and oddly, Orlando Bloom hardly features in the trailer. Looks like it's going to be the Captain Jack show.