DIRECTED BY Wolfgang Petersen
STARRING Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, Richard Dreyfuss
US 2006 100 mins.
IMAGINE ME & YOU *
DIRECTED BY Ol Parker
STARRING Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode
UK 2006 94 mins.
Clich?s come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them even walk and talk, as they do in the first half of Poseidon, before the titular ship capsizes in this needless-but-efficient remake of The Poseidon Adventure (1972). There they are, hollow and unformed as mannequins in a shop window. They’re not really characters – they’re just there, sailing on the good ship Poseidon because … well, someone has to. Indeed, like mannequins, their blandness is probably an asset; you don’t want customers getting distracted by originality when they’re looking in your shop window.
Here’s Josh Lucas as the reprobate hero, his slightly disreputable quality turning into rugged individualism when crisis hits. He’s a gambler – like Leo in Titanic – and will gamble his own and others’ lives, refusing to do as he’s told and huddle in the upside-down ballroom with the other survivors. Here’s Kurt Russell as the middle-aged big-shot (a former Mayor of New York); he’s the voice of Authority, and will tangle briefly with Josh for alpha-male status as the group makes its way up the ship’s shattered innards. Here’s Richard Dreyfuss as the Offbeat Older Man – played by Red Buttons in the first Poseidon, Fred Astaire in The Towering Inferno – in this case an embittered homosexual contemplating suicide when the “rogue wave” hits. Here’s Emmy Rossum as the teenage girl – Kurt’s daughter – her early fire damped by the slowly-rising waters as the film goes on. Here’s Jimmy Bennett as the kid; there has to be a kid, though this one lacks personality even by the standards of the genre.
All these people trudge onwards and upwards, negotiating various sticky wickets and nick-of-time escapes, occasionally shedding the more unfortunate (or just expendable) members of their party; the only real sub-plot concerns the daughter, who wants to marry her boyfriend but doesn’t know how to tell Dad. The 70s original had a little more, notably Gene Hackman as a priest going through a crisis of faith; all that’s been removed for the remake, presumably on grounds of distracting from the action. The film’s (melo)dramatic ambitions may be gauged by its cast. The first Poseidon had five Oscar winners in its all-star ranks; this has one (Dreyfuss), with the likes of Lucas and Rossum unlikely to trouble the Academy any time soon.
At least it’s gruelling, if rather mechanical. Banter is kept to a minimum. “Was that supposed to be sexy?” asks the single mum when Lucas describes what he does; “I don’t know. Was it?” he replies roguishly. The cheese factor is low, though it has its moments: passengers pop champagne and sing “Auld Lang Syne” (it’s a New Year’s cruise), but an officer standing on the bridge pricks up his ears; “You feel that? … I don’t know, something’s off…” It’s the approaching wave, of course – one of many great special effects, though in fact slightly inferior to the climactic wall of water in the same director’s Perfect Storm (1997). After the ship is struck the rhythm gets repetitive, settling into a series of videogame-like disaster scenarios; lift shafts must be crossed, gaping chasms negotiated, vents crawled-out of with the water rising inexorably beneath.
Poseidon is thin, no doubt about it. The action’s monotonous, the people one-dimensional; my two-star rating seems generous. Yet I saw it placate the World’s Worst Audience – kids on a Friday night, at the start of the school holidays – who seemed about to run riot during the adverts and trailers but settled down as the film unrolled, toned down their chatter, gasped where appropriate and clapped at the end. Never underestimate the power of clich?.
Imagine Me & You is also a crowd-pleaser; if it doesn’t work, it’s not through lack of trying. It takes not one but two sets of clich?s – those of the Richard Curtis Brit-com (Notting Hill, Love Actually) and those of the Hollywood romantic comedy – mixes them firmly and seasons with a trendy 00s spice: gay-and-lesbian cachet, often used to cook up a sheen of sophistication albeit mostly in failed experiments. (Anyone remember The Next Best Thing? Kissing Jessica Stein?) Add an upper-crust family, a winsomely precocious little girl and cool London ambience with views of Tower Bridge, and Bob’s your uncle. Or perhaps Bill and Bob are your gay uncles.
Piper Perabo – also succumbing to girl-on-girl attraction in Lost and Delirious a few years ago – is the wife whose happy marriage hits the rocks when she falls for Lena Headey, the flower-arranger at her own wedding. As in any sitcom, characters mostly stick to their first designation. Piper’s husband (Matthew Goode, doing a less flustered Hugh Grant) is incredibly nice, and never stops being nice. His boss is a slimeball – “[Matthew] works underneath me, but not in the Biblical sense” – and keeps on being a slimeball. His best friend ‘Coop’ is a womaniser, and 90% of his lines have to do with being a womaniser. Piper herself is quite timid though she does get a painfully contrived scene designed to show she has “no limits”, when she and Matthew bid for a couch at an auction. It’s meant to pave the way for her infatuation, but in fact the scene is so obviously a plant it only calls attention to its own incongruity.
The film, it must be said, is pretty sharp. Some of the exchanges are witty: “How do you feel?”; “You know when you’re holding a cup of coffee and you realise you’re about to sneeze? That’s how I feel!”. The dialogue does its utmost to avoid clich?: “I wouldn’t put you through that for all the coke in Colombia” (never “tea in China”). The plotting also tries to avoid the obvious: when the girls go out they go to a football game, and Headey passes on a useful trick that comes in handy at the climax – a clever case of that Hollywood trademark, the Set-Up-and-Payoff.
Yet the whole thing is clich?, from beginning to end – glorified sitcom with a fake plastic texture. You could go through it with a laugh-track, inserting canned hilarity at appropriate moments; “I look at you now,” says bachelor Coop to his newly-married friend, “and I see what you’ve got. The trust. The stability. And I think … I’m glad I’m not you!” (Laugh. Applause.) Like the Friends school of sitcom-ry, the film rolls its eyes at sex yet is constantly obsessed with it. It also makes appalling use of the precocious child, having her spout a constant stream of 8-year-old gems like “Why is the alphabet in that order?” and “Do penguins have knees?”. As for the gay-and-lesbian cachet … well, I guess it’s great that the world is now not-homophobic (homophilic?) but the pendulum, based on this movie, has swung wa-a-y too far in the opposite direction. No way would a love triangle with another man (as opposed to woman) have been resolved so blithely and simplistically.
I can see people laughing at Imagine Me & You and saying (of me) ‘What was his problem?’. I can see people clapping at Poseidon – in fact, that’s exactly what I did see – and warmly recommending it. You might think it strange, but that’s the way it is with clich?s; they aim to please, couching excitement in the lure of the familiar. Clich?s are powerful. They’ll get you every time. They’ll take over the world if we let them. Look out, readers!…
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few weeks. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (
for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
SURVIVE STYLE 5+: “Gloriously weird” Japanese cult movie with cartoonish ultra-violence. Not for all tastes, to put it mildly. [UK]
RUNNING SCARED: Violent but shamefully enjoyable crime thriller, starring Paul Walker. Includes storyboards and commentary by director Wayne Kramer. [US]
PUSHER: THE TRILOGY BOX SET: More ultra-violence, tales of the Danish underworld from the energy of ‘Pusher’ (1996) to the gory climax of ‘Pusher 3’ (2005). Includes audio commentary for each film plus a “Making of Pusher” featurette. [UK]
MADEA’S FAMILY REUNION: More violence? Only to the viewer’s sensibilities. ‘Madea’ is a man in drag – director Tyler Perry, who scored a massive hit with black-American audiences. A real comic oddity, with extras including commentary and deleted scenes. [US]
OLD FILMS
THE JOHN WAYNE / JOHN FORD COLLECTION: Not just Westerns, and that goes for the Westerns as well! 8 films from the Duke and his greatest director, led by a 2-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition of ‘The Searchers’ (1956) with copious extras including an Appreciation from Martin Scorsese. Also including five masterpieces: ‘Stagecoach’ (1939), ‘The Long Voyage Home’ (1940), WW2 drama ‘They Were Expendable’ (1945), ‘Fort Apache’ (1948) and ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’. $60 plus shipping for the set, films also available individually. [US]
THE JOHN FORD FILM COLLECTION: Confusingly, also out this month: five films made by Ford without Wayne, including ‘The Lost Patrol’ (1934), ‘Cheyenne Autumn’ (1964) and the Oscar-winning ‘The Informer’ (1935). Definitely worth a look for film buffs. [US]
LA HAINE (1995) (3-disc Ultimate Edition): French ghetto drama that (allegedly) foretold the recent riots; actually it didn’t, but it’s still very powerful. 3-disc package includes commentary, an essay on the riots, feature-length documentary “10 Years of La Haine”, and more. [UK]
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL / ONE + ONE (1968): Jean-Luc Godard meets the Rolling Stones: musical and late-60s political, with extras including the director’s cut of ‘One + One’ – without the changes that led Godard to punch the producer at the film’s premiere! [UK]
THE BETTE DAVIS COLLECTION, VOL. 2: Five more films from the Queen of Warner Bros., all with featurettes, bonus short and cartoon. Highlights include ‘Jezebel’ (1938), ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’ (1941) and a 2-disc version of ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ (1962) with commentary by a pair of female impersonators! [US]
