OVP: Poseidon (2006)

Film: Poseidon (2006)
Stars: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mike Vogel, Kevin Dillon, Stacy Ferguson, Andre Braugher
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I see a lot of movies, but I don't see a particularly large number of "bad" movies.  I'm not talking about a film like Vice or Bohemian Rhapsody where some people love it and I hated it, I'm talking about the sorts of movies that everyone generally agrees are truly awful, films like the ones that Nic Cage has made for the past twenty years.  Films, essentially, like Poseidon (a film that you could say stars Nic Cage and I don't think I would even bat an eye, even though I saw it yesterday).  The 2006 action film at seas is a truly terrible movie, but a movie so bad you almost could watch it ironically, appreciating the bizarre nature of such a massive film that features actors that were very much "of that year."

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a remake of the 1972 mammoth disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure (which you might remember I liked way back when we discussed it in 2012).  The film centers on a luxury liner, here already halfway out to sea (I'll give Petersen this-he doesn't skimp on the action with ancillary plot details that really detract from the whole reason you're seeing a film like Poseidon) and celebrating New Year's Eve with deadly consequences.  Among the passengers are former New York City mayor Robert Ramsey (Russell), his daughter Jennifer (Rossum), her boyfriend Christian (Vogel), a gay businessman Richard Nelson (Dreyfuss, and you know he's gay because he said "he" on the phone & wears an earring...because it's 2006 and that's all you needed then) and a professional gambler named Dylan (Lucas).  There are other characters, but they're mostly there to be corpses along the way, and so you don't really need their names.  In perhaps the best nod to the time period, Fergie (aka Stacy Ferguson) makes a brief appearance at the singer on the luxury lot, who is weirdly close to the ship's idiotic captain (Braugher) as for some reason they die in each other's arms.

The film's best, and only worthwhile, sequence is the gigantic crash.  If you hadn't already put it together, the reason I saw this movie in the first place was that it is part of the OVP, as it was nominated for Best Visual Effects in 2006.  The VFX are hard to gage, because it actually in some ways improves upon Titanic (the detail in some of the larger shots is incredible, considering the number of people and objects that are littered throughout the CGI), but it's also not differentiating itself enough in my opinion to be considered a landmark achievement like Titanic.  My brother noted that when you're grading Oscar's VFX choices in the new century, you're really just talking about a pre and post-Avatar world, and that's clear here-this movie wouldn't even get shortlisted today, but considering some of the contenders that year and the precision with which it used its VFX, it's a laudable nomination.

The film, though, is stupid.  The dialogue is painful, and frequently we see violent shifts in the personalities of the characters just to make it fit a specific scene; it's as if Ryan Murphy is the true captain of this boat.  All of the actors were very much "of the 00's" save for Russell & Dreyfuss, who are there to split the Shelley Winters role in half (heaven forbid we give that part to a woman in her 60's).  Rossum Vogel, Dillon, Lucas-they've all enjoyed some modicum of success since then but none ever took off as a film star, and it shows here when no one can rise through the mediocrity to become a standout.  The casting department didn't help Rossum in particular, as they literally cast two other women that look just like her in build and hair color to serve as token, damsels-in-distress (the women in this film are treated as nothing more than trophies or random people to be saved-literally none of them gets a moment of heroism-a twenty-year-old Rossum gets a piggyback ride from Russell at one point).  The film is terrible, but terrible in a way that's easy to mock.  I'm against hate viewing films (too many people put their heart-and-soul into a film to watch it ironically), but if that's your jam, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better movie to indulge your criticisms with.