By C. Ramsay
Much time is spent on characterization during the opening of The Poseidon Adventure, and though it is unclear whether or not this was the intention, it overwhelmingly involves traits that are negative. The vast majority of the characters are curmudgeonly, nosy, hyperactive, abusive, or any combination of, and it’s certainly an accomplishment that in opening the movie this way most viewers will still end up rooting and caring for the people we eventually follow.
This counterbalanced characterization is successful because of how effectively the disaster components of the film are handled, which stem from the SS Poseidon being capsized by a wave from an undersea earthquake while on her final voyage before being decommissioned due to her age. The degree of peril is established, the fear of which the viewer can relate to more strongly than any amount of disaffection that might be experienced through dislike of the characters. The shift from a joyful New Year’s celebration aboard the ship to complete panic is instantaneous, and there is some inventive camera and stunt work implemented to portray the ship capsizing. It’s the eventual sinking of the ship that works as a built-in timer to fuel audience anxieties, and the mix of this countdown with semi-regular catastrophic sequences as the ship comes closer and closer to fully submerging adds to the tension that the characterization can sometimes detract from.
The physical environment within the ship is also better rounded out through time being taken to focus on the confusion that comes from characters suddenly having to understand their surroundings from a counterintuitive perspective, and from needing to reassess how they’re now capable of moving through them. Any aspects of familiarity that the ship guests and crew may have had switch to working against them because of how transformed the layout becomes, but the advantage to this is that it correspondingly leads to opportunities to repurpose mundane objects into tools, and we’re given multiple moments in which this is put into practice. The willingness, or lack of, of the people onboard to take initiative in securing their chance at survival is a constant parallel to the film’s consideration of who can be trusted to make decisions and how often the outcomes simply come down to luck. In following the group that attaches itself to the leadership of Reverend Scott, played by Gene Hackman, the audience is essentially only brought to agreement with the decisions that they make because we spend the duration of the film under the viewpoint of their, and predominantly his, logic. With this context, it’s easy to feel for the other occasional survivors who make different choices based on the knowledge or assumptions they have, ultimately leading them to their death.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t expand much on many of its most creative aspects, which ends up stunting it and results in treating its ideas to a higher standard than their own execution. There is a misplaced uncertainty that hovers over the beginning of the movie regarding what’s going on or what’s going to happen that derives specifically from everyone seeming to be in a different project. The only commonality that anyone seems to have is a niche brand of gaucheness, which is augmented by some outdated and sometimes even odd character crises at play. The John Williams score plays more into the broader flow of adventure movies than it works to complement the distinct beats of the film, leading to situations in which the music inadvertently adds comedic effect through its genericity rather than working to underline the emotions of any given scene. Hackman, too, brings such an exaggerated energy to his performance that it outshines the personalities of practically everyone else and becomes exhausting by the third act. Far too much yelling—of the screechy, childish variety—is included as a staple conversational style, which is made even worse in that it’s so often used in the same type of way as when people try to stylistically emphasize text using bold or italics because they assume that readers wouldn’t otherwise be able to tell where the emphasis should be. This level of spoon-feeding around communicative significance only ends up reducing the quality of interpretation that the audience can be expected to have for the film as a whole, and this along with its other flaws are what hold The Poseidon Adventure to a mediocre reputation when it could easily exceed that.
Star rating (/5): ★★½
Recommend?: Worth checking out