The plot of 2006’s Poseidon may sound familiar.

There’s this cruise ship.  It’s a luxury liner and it’s sailing across the ocean on New Year’s Eve.  There’s a lot of passengers on the liner.  Most of them are wealthy and the majority of them are played by familiar actors.  Everyone is in the ballroom, celebrating the upcoming new year.  They do the countdown.  They cheer when they hit zero.  Kisses are exchanges.  Dances are danced.  A blonde woman sings a song.  Suddenly, a tidal wave smashes into the Poseidon, turning it over.  Explosions rock the ship as it ends up floating upside down.  The majority of the crew and the passengers are killed immediately.  The survivors face a decision.  Do they stay in the ballroom or do they attempt to climb upwards to safety?

Yep, Poseidon is a remake of The Poseidon Adventure.  It tells basically the same story but with slightly better special effects and slightly less histrionic actors.  The original Poseidon Adventure had Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine yelling at each other for over two hours while Shelley Winters swam until she died.  “WHERE’S YOUR GOD NOW, PREACHER!?” Borgnine shouted while Hackman yelled, “ROGO!” over and over again.  (Rogo was Borgnine’s character.  Hackman shouted the name with a wonderful amount of loathing.)  It was a very loud and every entertaining movie.  The cast of Poseidon is a bit more low-key but Poseidon is also more interested in special effects than any sort of human (melo)drama.

For instance, Josh Lucas plays a Navy veteran-turned-professional gambler.  He gives a good performance as the de facto leader of the survivors but he never gets to yell as much as Gene Hackman did in the original.  Richard Dreyfuss plays an architect and you would think that Dreyfuss, of all people, would chew up the scenery in this disaster film with relish but Dreyfuss is oddly subdued.  Jacinda Barrett is the mother who tries to protect her son (played by Jimmy Bennett).  Fergie is the singer who embraces the ship’s captain (Andre Braugher) as the ballroom floods.  Emmy Rossum is the rebellious teenager.  Mike Vogel is her boyfriend.  And Kurt Russell plays the former mayor of New York City.  He also happens to be a former fireman.

It’s a good cast.  Kurt Russell is especially good in his role, believable as both a fireman (a role that he’s played in a few films) and as a politician.  It’s a talented group of actors but no one really goes overboard in the way that Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Stella Stevens, Roddy McDowall, and even Leslie Nielsen did in the first one.  The premise of the film is so silly that it really does require the cast and the director to fully embrace the melodrama.  As opposed to the original, this film only gives the melodrama a quick hug and instead concentrates on explosions, water, and flames.  The special effects overshadow the humans and that’s unfortunate because there’s a lot of interesting people in this movie.  A good performance can last a lifetime.  There’s a reason why we still talk about Kurt Russell in films like Escape From New York and The Thing.  Good special effects, on the other hand, still look incredibly dated after three years.

I’m not really sure that it was necessary to remake The Poseidon Adventure in the first place.  I’m just glad they left Beyond The Poseidon Adventure alone.