What I’m Watching: Poseidon (2006)

This Kurt Russell sinking boat show was more awful than you can really imagine. Fake-dark orange/cyan lighting constantly, everyone overacts and has the most cliché lines, which set up character that’s never explored after the start. Captain’s completely passive and useless; Captain Stubing would’ve saved more lives. Hispanics all die, and the Captain’s the only black person on the boat AFAICT, but the richer and whiter you are (for fuck’s sake, Richard Dreyfuss?) the more likely you are to live. Women do nothing but scream until a man can save them.

The disaster scenes are pretty nice, though. The casino flipping, and big rooms flooding, are violent and electricity and shrapnel go everywhere. That’s what we pay for.

Oh, screenwriter’s Mark Protosevich, the same piece of shit who wrote the Wil Smith “I Am Legend” that utterly missed the point of the book even more than the last 3 adaptations, and the ripoff “Oldboy” that discarded everything good about Chan-wook Park’s amazing Oldboy (2003). I actually liked The Cell (2000), but I attribute that more to Jennifer Lopez, who looks good in a bodysuit.

I’m rooting for the ocean and the ship to eat them all, but sadly some have obvious plot immunity, especially the dumb kid and screaming useless single mom. Kurt Russell as a firefighter who became Mayor of New York is a slightly funny callback to Escape From New York and Backdraft, but the bosses would never let someone like him be elected, and he’s phoned this one in.

A good terrible end to a terrible year.

★★☆☆☆