Disaster in the making!

Saturday nights were often the most enjoyable times to work at our video store. To deal with the hustle of customers stocking up on films for the weekend, we would usually run some of our favorite films on the tv sets throughout the store. One of our all-time favorites was the 1972 disaster classic, The Poseidon Adventure. What a cast! Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Stella Stevens, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley and of course, Shelley Winters. Based on the novel by Paul Gallico and written for the screen by Stirling Silliphant, The Poseidon Adventure was the top grossing film at the box office in 1972. Audiences flocked to see the all-star cast struggle and argue with each other as they made their way through the capsized ocean liner. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards including a best supporting Oscar nod for Winters. She lost the award to Eileen Heckart (Butterflies are Free), but over thirty years later it is Winters' performance as an overweight Jewish grandmother, that is so fondly remembered. With the success of films like Titanic, and the advent of CGI digital effects it is no wonder that Hollywood decided to crank out another big screen adaptation of Poseidon. In fact two re-makes were made in the last two years, a TV remake starring Steve Guttenberg, and now the Warner Brothers film starring Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss. The tv version was almost unbearable to watch, a ripped-from-the-headlines plot capitalizing on post 9/11 terrorism fears, had terrorist bombs responsible for capsizing the ill-fated cruise ship. The big-screen remake fares little better, the digital effects make for a dazzling 4 minute capsizing sequence, but the additional 90 minutes of unmotivated and uninteresting dialogue make the short running-time seem like an eternity. Dreyfuss gives it his best trying to fill his role of a grieving elderly gay man with a few moments of thoughtful insight, but the script fails him as well as the rest of the cast. So many questions linger throughout the film over many of the characters motivations and backgrounds, that it is hard even by the end of the film to remember many of the characters names. It is hard not to compare the re-makes to the original, but when the original is so memorable for it's broadly drawn characters, and often camp-filled dialogue, it is hard not too. One of the reasons the original film works so well, is that by the time the ship turns over the characters are all so broadly drawn and their relationships to each other so well known to the audience, that you can't help but be taken in regardless of the absurdity of the plot. What seems missing from the new film is that conflict of wills that was so prevalent in the original. Borgnine vs. Hackman was the fight you witnessed throughout the struggle to make it out alive, a struggle that is missing in the 2006 version. And despite the big budget and digital effects on hand in the new film, the interiors of the original films ship are much more realistic and convincing. Often in the new Poseidon, sets don't appear to be much different upside down from when they appeared right side up! Re-makes like Poseidon seem to be following a trend in movie making these days. A trend that seeks only to fill seats in movie theaters. Bigger is better in Hollywood. The updated computer wizardry is utilized to re-make the beloved films of the past bigger and better for today's young audiences. Although Wolfgang Petersen is a skilled director and handles most of the action sequence well-enough in the new version, he could have taken a page from Peter Jackson's playbook. When Jackson updated the legendary 1933 classic King Kong much reverence was paid to the original, and great care was taken in presenting its cast along side a mammoth CGI character. In Petersens' case the mammoth ocean liner sank his characters too fast, for what remains for them to discover is just plain dull. While watching this most recent update, somewhere in the back of my head I swear I could hear the faint cries of Shelly Winters yelling soulfully throughout the new ship...."Manny, Manny I'm stuck on this boat!"