Poseidon – I called every death

Poseidon

It’s been done before…

I saw Poseidon today. I can describe it in one word for you: fail.

I’m dead serious here. This movie completely fails on so many different levels, it is not even funny. Let me count the ways:

It completely fails at suspense, because I managed to call every single death before it happened. It was good for couple of laughs when we predicted the demise of the characters just before they died. But you really can’t build suspense by following the old Holywood formula of “kill the token characters first, then the rude annoying ones, then the weak ones, and then have one of the main male characters make a tragic sacrifice”. It’s been done before so many times, that we can see these things coming a mile away.

It fails at plot. It is as simple, and linear as it gets. You would think there would be some interesting twists in there, but there are none. We are just jumping from one plot device to another, and using “pressing danger” as an excuse for week writing.

It fails at dialog because it just feels contrived at times. The characters do not interrupt each other, do not yell over each other, or cut in the middle of someones sentence. Especially in highly emotional situations this just seems odd.

It fails at continuity – one minute a guy is limping because his leg was crushed and badly cut. The next minute he is climbing, swimming and running as if nothing happened. A fire hose dragged through a fire does not catch on or even get smoldered. Oh, and there is an empty life raft floating in the sea right where the characters climb out of the ship.

It fails at character development. All the characters are as one dimensional as possible and all the development is formulaic. You have your standard selfish guy becoming a selfless hero, your single mother who bonds with the hero, the concerned father rescuing his daughter and etc.. Nothing new – it’s all been done before.

As we were watching this, we played the “call the next death” game. I called every single one correctly. Let me give you a rundown:

– Beyond this point there will be spoilers. You have been warned. –

Let’s just go down the list of characters, shall we? We have the heroic Kurt Russel who is an ex-mayor, ex-firefighter and a concerned father. From the get-go he is pegged for a heroic demise. In bad movies, the father always sacrifices himself to save his daughter and/or financee – see Armagedon for references here. Then we have Kurt’s daughter and her financee. They are the happy couple of the group and they are gonna survive. Daddy doesn’t like the guy his daughter chose, but over the course of the movie he will change his mind and end up saving his life. Been there, done that.

Next in line are the single mother and her annoying kid. Neither one could die, because that would be a pointless downer. The kid will be used as a plot device, slowing down the party, and getting lost at convenient moments. The mother will be overly dramatic – the first one to state the obvious, or squeal in terror.

There is also a middle aged gay guy who is neither heroic, or tough. Of course you can’t just kill him unless you make it a heroic death. I thought that he was being set up some character-redefining selfless act of some sort but I wasn’t sure if it would be fatal to him. The fact that he goes back for the stowaway girl is kinda brave, but not really all that heroic. Beyond that point his character became irrelevant.

I initially thought that stowaway girl would survive. But then she turned out to be the mandatory claustrophobic crew member who would freak out while crawling through the vents. You just can’t be freaking out in these sort of movies – anyone who looses it, and endangers the others is as good as dead.

Drama from Entourage was also in this movie. He plays a rude, obnoxious selfish drunk. It’s kinda obvious, isn’t it? Rude guys never survive these things – it’s a rule. I knew he was a dead man walking since he first opened his mouth. There is also a token waiter who gets no intro time early on in the movie, and simply agrees to show the main characters the best way to get out of the ship for money. Obviously he is the first one to die – you always kill off the token dude first.

Then there’s the main hero who only cares about himself, but over the course of the movie grows as a person. He would also potentially be good candidate for a heroic sacrifice however, since he bonds with the single mother, he gets to survive.

Sigh.. You know – it’s like I have seen this movie before. Many, many times. So if you like formulaic and unoriginal movies, or you want to play “call the next death” game, go ahead and watch it. Me – I guess I will never get back these 90 minutes of my life. :|

My rating: 0.5 stars