The reviews are almost unbearably bad -- not even mediocre!
I've long complained that the way movies are made today, it's tough to make a film that's flat out bad. I'm now quite curious to see if POSEIDON really is as bad as they say, though I'm not about to spend $10 to find out
The only interesting thing is that it's managed to get POSITIVE reviews from Peter Travers and Entertainment Weekly, which is intriguing...
This one's been exuding an Avengers style smell ever since it was revealed the running time was 99 minutes with credits and when Warners originally stated they would only show the first 20 minutes to critics - interesting to see they reversed that decision (perhaps because of the stink when they did that with Avngers).
Petersen is a wildly inconsistent director - he can make good audience pictures or outright crap like Air Force One that gets by purely on starpower, something this one is sorely lacking (it's been about 20 years since that cast looked impressive). However, I'm guessing that like Avengers, it isn't quite that bad, even though the cuts make it seem worse rather than better.
I'm not sure who this film is really trying to appeal to in the end. The major incident is a huge wave capsizing the ship....which is something you can see on National Geographic, the Weather Channel, or the Discovery Channel on one of those "what-if" weather disaster shows. Heck, watch The Deadliest Catch on Discovery if you want to see huge waves making life miserable for a bunch of people on a boat! And everyone saw that be-all-end-all shipwreck movie called TITANIC....so what was the point of remaking this film? Even the list of actors/actresses is unappealing- interestign that they would remake this film of all the disaster films to revisit. EARTHQUAKE might have been better to start with-
Anyone else notice that Josh Lucas is starting to approximate Colin Farrell as the new formula for box-office poison? I'm not a huge fan of Lucas -- in fact he comes across as a sub-McConaughey without his charisma -- and if this tanks it'll be another huge blockbuster in a row (after STEALTH) that he starred in.
As far as Farrell goes, I've never been impressed (you could have had a pole act its way through THE NEW WORLD and been as effective) and MIAMI VICE looks like another dud to add to his resume...
AndyDursin wrote:As far as Farrell goes, I've never been impressed (you could have had a pole act its way through THE NEW WORLD and been as effective) and MIAMI VICE looks like another dud to add to his resume...
Judging from the terible trailer and the cheap looking video Mann is shooting on, I'm betting Miami Vice will be the Summer's biggest turkey. I'm mildly interested in seeing Poseidon somewhere down the line, even if only as a freebie, but Miami Vice just looks like tired junk with a zero charisma cast.
So, what do you reckon Farrell has on the major studio execs that they keep on casting him time after time, no matter how many flops he has?
AndyDursin wrote:As far as Farrell goes, I've never been impressed (you could have had a pole act its way through THE NEW WORLD and been as effective) and MIAMI VICE looks like another dud to add to his resume...
Judging from the terible trailer and the cheap looking video Mann is shooting on, I'm betting Miami Vice will be the Summer's biggest turkey. I'm mildly interested in seeing Poseidon somewhere down the line, even if only as a freebie, but Miami Vice just looks like tired junk with a zero charisma cast.
So, what do you reckon Farrell has on the major studio execs that they keep on casting him time after time, no matter how many flops he has?
Agreed on all counts. WHY does he keep getting cast in these films? What's the movie he was in that performed so well that he continues to get all these high-profile roles? Even MINORITY REPORT was regarded as a very small domestic performer for Spielberg and Cruise given the subject matter...and isn't it Farrell's biggest film to date? (and not that he carried it, either -- I can't imagine that anyone remembers he was even in it!)
EDIT: Just looked at his IMDB resume. Is there another star like him with a roster of flops as long? TIGERLAND, VERONICA GUERIN, HART'S WAR...even the movies that performed "well" were only very modest hits (THE RECRUIT, PHONE BOOTH, etc.).
AndyDursin wrote:Anyone else notice that Josh Lucas is starting to approximate Colin Farrell as the new formula for box-office poison? I'm not a huge fan of Lucas -- in fact he comes across as a sub-McConaughey without his charisma -- and if this tanks it'll be another huge blockbuster in a row (after STEALTH) that he starred in.
As far as Farrell goes, I've never been impressed (you could have had a pole act its way through THE NEW WORLD and been as effective) and MIAMI VICE looks like another dud to add to his resume...
Agreed 100 percent. Guys like Farrel and Lucas are flavor of the month guys period.
This Poseidon movie looks like what I'd expect for the summer: Big, dumb, one timer fun.
I'll be interested to see what Badelt's score is like for this thing. I keep hearing glowing words about his score to The Promise, which got a domestic CD release, thankfully.
I just came back from a near empty matinee screening (about three people in the multiplex) and it is indeed a cinematic turkey, albeit no worse than your usual brain dead FX movie that's devoid of a decent script and decent acting. Films like that of which "Armageddon" is the template, remind me more and more of how much higher the quality is in the original Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno etc.
The thing I found most ridiculous was Richard Dreyfuss being able to see the wave first on deck and then having enough time to get all the way back inside to the ballroom. And for goodness sake, would it have killed Petersen to have done just *one* tiny homage to the original?
I just listened to the score and hey, if that is not already the worst score of the year, then I don't want to know what else is yet to come!
Klaus Badelt should really do us a favor and stop writing filmmusic. Or any music at all.
Well, at least, he is usable as a quality-o-meter of a movie. When you read his name on the poster of a movie then you know it's not a good movie. I don't mean by that it is his fault, but in the last couple years he scored only awful movies... seems like the studios don't getr anybody else to score the c-movies and he always takes them!
Actually Roman Zimmer's DA VINCI score has been derided even MORE than Badelt's! In fact I've never seen a score mentioned as being poor and obtrusive in so many reviews that I can recall.
Maybe it's just not a good year for the MV gang! (Though I've liked several Badelt scores, PROMISE and especially PIRATES, in the past).
I just saw POTC again and well, I really hated the score this time. I thought before it was ok and even had some nice moments, but now after a couple years and so MV-overkill it really gets old... I think in a couple years the 90ies and the MV stuff will be considered as a thing of its time and completely out of style and something nobody can take seriously anymore.
Good to see that at least John Powell evolves out of that as you would never guess it's one of the MV gang who wrote x3...
I don't know if they're running them in your neck of the woods, but the TV spots for Zimmer's score for Da Vinci (which sounds hideous from the extracts they're using in the ad) boast some of the funniest hyperbole I've heard in years - "The soundtrack to The Da Vinci Code - Music to make the heavens fall by Hans Zimmer." O-kay...
Back to Poseidon, one thing which may have been a factor was that TV miniseries last year, which may have soured a lot of people on the whole idea. I've no idea of the contractual reasons for the two versions (although at one time TV and film rights to novels were sold separately, which may account for it), but it couldn't have done them any favours.
Still, it could have been worse for Poseidon - they could have agreed to Clive Owen's inflated salary demands (he reputedly doubled his price after the Oscar nomination) and lost even more money!
The first UK magazine reviews have started appearing, and amazingly it's getting the best critical reaction of any of the Summer films so far: where MI3 and X3 averaged around 3/5 or lower and nobody like DaVinci, Poseidon has been getting around 4/5 and some real raves among them. Since most of these were written before the film bombed Stateside, it'll be interesting to see what the newspapers' reaction is over here - they tend to be much more led by the US box-office these days.
Carlson2005 wrote:Back to Poseidon, one thing which may have been a factor was that TV miniseries last year, which may have soured a lot of people on the whole idea.
Nah, I can't imagine that had anything to do with it -- it actually wasn't even a mini-series but rather a 3-hour movie on NBC, a network nobody watches, and they ran it as the sacrificial lamb against Desperate Housewives (when that show was #1) without even bothering to publicize it...nobody would have remembered it even aired, much less how good it was.
Since most of these were written before the film bombed Stateside, it'll be interesting to see what the newspapers' reaction is over here - they tend to be much more led by the US box-office these days.