When I was a kid, my favorite movie in the whole wide world was The Poseiden Adventure. I watched it w/ my dad every year that they played it on TV. It was my Wizard of Oz... except for unlike Dorothy's group in Oz, the Poseiden group arbitrarily lost people to watery, fiery deaths on their journey to see the wizard (or rather, to reach the rescue party.)
So I was a little miffed when I saw they were making, not one, but TWO re-makes of the film this year. The first was a made-for-tv-movie-copy-cat-piece-of-trash that aired a few months back. It suck-suck-sucked.
The second came out this weekend in theaters - Poseiden. My nephew wanted to see it (nudge nudge wink wink), so we went. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It actually did a decent job of replicating the suspense of the original, without being an all-out copy-cat. It was its own film, which I respected.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
All the characters were new. Instead of a sister and brother, it was a young single mom and her child. Instead of Shelley Winters and her hubby, the AARP rep in this one was an old gay guy played over-flamingly by Richard Dreyfuss. And Gene Hackman's hero role was split equally between Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas. They nixed the go-go dancer/waiter love story and went with an immigrant girl and her new gay friend instead. Oh, and the hooker/cop married couple weren't in this one. No substitutions either.
The death scenarios were different too. Amped up for the next generation, of course. One in particular was so horrifying, I couldn't stop laughing.
They threw in quotes here and there from the old one, which I loved. Way to head-nod us old-schoolers.
The one thing I thought was really lame though was the Armageddon rip-off scenario where the overprotective father gives his approval of his daughter's secret engagement plan - by killing himself. LAME!
SPOILERS ENDED
Overall, it was sufficiently entertaining for the matinee price. And it wasn't as horrible a rip-off as I thought it'd be. It used the Poseiden formula, and it worked. Overall grade: B.
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3 comments:
Well Im glad to hear that it wasn't another copy-cat movie. I guess I'll have to find someone's nephew ( since I don't have one) that would want to go see it. It is amazing how many times they can remake one movie and still make money.
I saw that TV version of the Poseiden adventure.. it was HORRIBLY bad.. but such a train wreck I couldn't look away.
Too bad about Xmen 3. I was fearing from somthing I saw in a preview that it might suck.
Oh, well I tend to like movies more when I go in with low expectations.
-Brad
Yeah, we heard about Xmen 3 too. Oh well.. we'll still have our mini-marathon and go see it just to be sure. You in, Brad?
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