Poseidon (Good)
Synopsis: A massive cruise ship capsizes, and a motley band of survivors must climb to the “bottom” of the boat to escape.
It can’t be said enough: disaster movies rock. With the notable exception of “Atomic Twister” (hey, I do have some standards), I have rarely met a disaster movie that I didn’t like. I think of them like a woman thinks of a Harlequin Romance novel: cheap, fluffy entertainment that goes down easy and leaves you feeling good about yourself for about two seconds. It’s like candy. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I usually enjoy watching disaster movies, even if they are bad. The key is that they have to be the good kind of bad. How do you know what’s good-bad and what’s bad-bad? Allow me to illustrate this with some points about the movie, followed by some counterpoints about films that I did not care for. Good-bad is when the movie characters show no personal growth whatsoever throughout the course of the movie, but somehow you like them anyway. Bad-bad is when the characters are so flat the actors may as well have been cardboard cut-outs (”Catwoman”). Good-bad is when the movie starts fast and ends fast, leaving zero room for plot, but you still feel like you just went on one heck of a ride. Bad-bad is when you are so bored that you want to gnaw off the arm that is holding your wife’s hand, just so you can go to the bathroom and weep (”The Break Up”). Good-bad is when you frequently wonder how the director of “Das Boot” could stoop to make such a cheap and thoughtless film, but you watch the credits roll while smiling and wondering if your wife would object to you buying the DVD. Bad-bad is when you have a sick, desperate feeling in the pit of your stomach as you leave the theatre wondering how you could possibly get those two hours of your life back (”The Brothers Grimm”). From a purely critical perspective, “Poseidon” was a lame duck (go rent the original 1972 version, “The Poseidon Adventure,” for good film-making), but it was equally interesting, exciting, and most importantly, entertaining.
