The Poseidon Adventure (2005)

Positively dreadful! The makers of this remake of the 1972 disaster classic seem clueless as to what made the original film a hit. Their attempt to make the film more "relevant" by replacing the tidal wave with an explosion caused by terrorist bombs is pathetic. And at three hours, they've added an extra hour for more trite dialogue, dull characters and tiresome exposition at the command headquarters where the rescue operations are overseen. None of the poor actors have as strong a presence as the original cast and their characters are rewritten for the worse. We get huge blocks of tedious domestic drama and the film upholds family values by killing off a married man's mistress at the last moment to punish her for breaking up a family thus paving the way for the family to reunite. Two of the actors manage not to embarrass themselves. Adam Baldwin as Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine in the 1972 film), here not a cop but a homeland security agent and Sylvia Syms as Belle Rosen (the Shelley Winters part) who plays it more subtly than Winters did. As for the others, let them hang their heads in shame: Rutger Hauer, Bryan Brown, Peter Weller, Alex Kingston, C. Thomas Howell and the worst offender, Steve Guttenberg.