The Poseidon (Lack of an) Adventure

Here at Bad Tivo! we watch crap so you don't have to. This week's bad television was The Poseidon Adventure on NBC. The adventure, as it were, featured such stalwart acting professionals as Steve Guttenberg of Police Academy fame, who plays a wayward novelist who is on the cruise with his wife and kids as perhaps a last-ditch effort to save his marriage. Yes, by all means, bring the kids along if you're trying to save your marriage. He also waits approximately five minutes before beginning to boff a masseuse on board the ship. Later, during a climactic scene, we're treated to Guttenberg's character stopping the proceedings as everyone's life hangs in the balance to profess his love of his family to his family. Uh, yeah, later dude. Time and place for everything.

Rutger Hauer (incredibly, he was available) played a Bishop who was traveling somewhere to do his holy duties and, evidently, the best way to get there was via a luxury cruise ship. Ah, yes, the sacrifices the clergy make.

Peter Weller, also known as Robocop, played the ship's captain but not for very long. He's among the first casualties of the terrorists. Oops, did I give some of the story away? Don't worry about it. I'm saving you three hours of your life that you'll never get back.

Bryan Brown plays a hotshot Hollywood producer/director who is on board with his new, young Hollywood trophy wife. Bryan Brown, you may recall, played the wise, older bartender opposite Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Toward the end of that movie, Brown blows his brains out which, in hindsight, was very symbolic in terms of how his career turned out. Now he's playing roles that make the audience want to blow their brains out.

Another noteworthy actress involved was Alex Kingston, late of ER. She played some sort of British intelligence agent, cold as ice and predictably, Britishly tight-assed. I wonder what goes through her mind when she gets a script like this.... "Yeah, you know, I can do a cold, by-the-book, uptight bitch. I've been one my entire life and I'm really rather homely, despite every attempt to make me attractive. Plus, my mortgage check is due."

The ship has terrorists on board and one Homeland Security Marshall, played by Adam Baldwin. The terrorists are able to set off one bomb that puts a large hole in the boat just below water level and on one side. The result is that the ship begins to list and then, inexplicably, capsizes. At least they mention in the movie that this is kind of, I don't know, impossible. At one point, the blonde genius that Guttenberg's character is nailing says, "Oh my god, we're upside down," a soundbyte designed, conceived and delivered 100% for the promo. However, when you see it in context it's kind of funny. I mean, it took until the ship was completely upside down, your belongings were now on the ceiling, you were now on the ceiling and you're tripping on chandeliers to realize that? Guttenberg replies with the equally as brilliant, "Cruise ships don't capsize." Oh, okay, that settles that. It's probably just some temporary problem with gravity, then.

At another point, we see Baldwin, the homeland securiy agent, poking around with the ship's head of security who, as it turns out, carries a gun. After Baldwin shoots dead a terrorist and leaves to find another one, he leaves the security chief with the dead criminal and instructs him to "secure the area." Then, we never see the security head again. I don't know if we're expected to just assume he died whe the ship capsized or perhaps I just nodded off for a few scenes (entirely possible), but this seemed like a horribly gaping hole. I know it doesn't affect the plot (what there was of one, anyway), but still. The guy had lines and was apparently one of only a few armed people on board. Why just leave him on the cutting room floor? It was a three-hour movie; I can't imagine they cut much out.

Anyway, as I said, the ship capsizes which is so utterly ridiculous it's hard to fathom. Just like 10.5, NBC's earthquake miniseries a couple of springs ago, it's apparent that nobody does any research whatsoever at NBC to see if the crap they're slinging could ever happen under any circumstances. An ocean liner, to put it simply, cannot do what the Poseidon does. For one thing, when a 100,000+ ton ship turns on it's side, all that weight is now crushing on the above-water windows and walls, etc. If that's not enough to crush it, it's certainly enough to damage the ship so as to let in more water and thus, sink it almost immediately. Then, once the ship is upside down, for some reason it doesn't fill with water. The truth is, any holes or broken windows would be letting in water and the amount of pressure from the ocean water might just increase the size of any holes brought about by broken glass doors, etc. Thus, the ship would quickly head to the bottom of the ocean. In The Adventure, they are able to last overnight and into the next day before the ship sinks, predictably, just as the survivors get off.

In fact, the ship is upside down by about the one-hour mark. Which means we have two more hours of "adventure" within the ship, which mainly consisted of bickering about what to do and how to escape. There's the obligatory obstacle-man, who refuses to follow those who are pressing to get to higher (now lower) ground. He tells people not to go and they end up drowning as a result. There are the nice crew members whom we come to like, only to see them die untimely deaths. One guy, a waiter captain it would seem, has a giant metal object crush him in a flaming kitchen (it looked like it might have been a cooking hood of some sort, or maybe a ventilation system -- either way, it looked like it hurt). Another guy, some sort of relations officer, made nice with a lot of the adventurers only to be knocked down some sort of vent shaft by rushing water, falling into the abyss and presumably to his death with the expected "ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!" And the final ridiculous death was by the blonde masseuse whom Guttenberg had just recently boinked. At the end they, naturally, have to cross a catwalk over some sort of raging inferno below. The catwalk collapses and she claims she's not able to hang on to what now looks like a ladder (imagine a collapsed catwalk hanging down but with bars) and so she very pointedly lets go and falls into the flames. Guttenberg's wife gives him a classic look of, "Serves you both right." Or maybe it's "See, that would never happen to me -- I'm so cold, I'd put out the flames."

As it turns out, seven of them are saved and the rest go down with the ship. Sadly, NBC executives are not among them.