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Poseidon

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 75 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Adventure | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Mark Protosevich
Paul Gallico (novel)
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 12, 2006
DVD: August 22, 2006
Running Time: 97 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for intense prolonged sequences of disaster and peril
Starring Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Jacinda Barrett, Richard Dreyfuss, Jimmy Bennett, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Mía Maestro, Andre Braugher, and Kevin Dillon
Master storyteller Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) returns to the sea with Poseidon to focus not only on the power of a massive rogue wave that overturns a luxury cruise ship in open water, but on the intense dramas that play out among a small group of people fighting to survive in its aftermath. (Warner Bros.)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Air Force One Das Boot In the Line of Fire The NeverEnding Story The Perfect Storm Troy
TV: The Poseidon Adventure (NBC)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's a buoyant, old-wave disaster pic for a generation of well-conditioned thrill seekers charmed by the revelation that Richard Dreyfuss really is the Red Buttons of our day.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Beyond being a showplace for crash-and-burn effects, Poseidon seems to be stumping for togetherness.
Read Full Review >Empire Simon Braund
A shot in the arm for the classic disaster movie: awesome effects, nail-biting tension and a cast of characters we don’t want dead after half an hour - even, amazingly, the cute kid.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
You'll end up entertained if you forgive the cliches and let Petersen grab you with the visuals.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
As clumsy as the movie is in many ways, it strings together maybe a dozen situations in which we are absolutely, excruciatingly, on the edge of our seats -- which is to say that the new Poseidon essentially does its job.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The new cast is no match for the star-clustered original, but Lucas, who looks much like a young Paul Newman (you may think you're watching "The Towering Inferno"), has a strong, matinee-idol presence, and Russell is a reliable old hand at this sort of thing.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
An extremely well-crafted exercise in physical invention and fear. Yet within those limits--the limits of a pop-digital survival drama--Poseidon is an exciting show.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Petersen leaves out, largely, character, back story, anecdote and warm personal relations. Poseidon isn't cute, funny, warm, nice, inspirational or uplifting. It's about the incredible labor of survival in a world turned totally sociopathic in an instant.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
Among the willing cast, only Jacinda Barrett and topliners Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss manage, just barely, to suggest a third dimension to the script's cursory character sketches. But that won't matter to audiences craving a disaster thrill ride.
Read Full Review >Variety Brian Lowry
Thanks to its simple construction, Wolfgang Petersen's large-scale liner moves reasonably well, though anyone with the faintest memory of its 1972 predecessor will wonder where most of the plot went.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Poseidon is devoid of anything that might conjure up memories of the Winslet/DiCaprio coupling. Its straightforward action/adventure approach is both a strength and a weakness.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
By stripping the genre down to its essentials, long on the serial disasters but thankfully light on the stupid dialogue, [Petersen] not only maintains an acceptable modicum of suspense but -- here's the major bonus -- also manages to set a blissful speed record in the process, bringing his pricey blockbuster home to port in under 100 minutes.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
In the plus column, Poseidon is a tightly-paced action movie that doesn’t depend too much on special effects for its thrills.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
The effects are terrific, from the two-and-a-half-minute opening sequence that tracks around the brilliantly lit liner from below, above and round about, to some amazing exterior shots of the groaning vessel rolling around in the churning sea like a giant, wounded whale.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
"Titanic" without the metaphors, the class-consciousness, the love story, or anything resembling a theme, Poseidon invests so little in its screenplay that it might as well be an episode of "The Love Boat" gone horribly awry.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
An acceptably entertaining picture. At just 100 minutes long, it feels tight and trim, and unlike so many contemporary action pictures, it boasts only one ending, instead of three false ones. What's more, it's just as dumb as the original.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
After 9/11 and Katrina, this megabudget remake by Wolfgang Petersen benefits from a similar cultural oomph, though it's just as enjoyably silly as the original.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Exciting and nerve-racking in the moment, but empty.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Aside from a disturbingly graphic depiction of a drowning, there is also death by fire, electrocution and giant falling objects.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The special effects, with one painful exception, hold up beautifully. But the people have no personalities, the story is unconvincing, and the whole movie is as shallow as the puddle left on a flat roof by a 20-minute shower.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
There's nothing hip or ironic about Poseidon, which makes Russell and Lucas the perfect leading men.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Maybe it's the era we're living in, but the new film is as much fun as a shroud.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Pretty much pure boilerplate: a reasonably well-executed throwaway that, when you finally get around to seeing it in its proper setting, will make you glad you decided to travel by air instead of by sea.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
More than characters, dialogue and lighting, here Petersen is interested exclusively in suspense of the will-he-or-won't-he-be-crushed-by-that-falling-flaming-elevator variety.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There is nothing wrong with the performances. All of the actors are professionals, although none have as much fun as Shelley Winters, who is the actor everyone remembers from the 1972 movie.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
At least Poseidon takes care to dispatch the Black Eyed Peas' Stacy Ferguson who, as the shipboard entertainer, sings what may be the worst song ever written, reprised over the end credits.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell
Poseidon '06 is spectacularly noisy, uninteresting and character-free.
Read Full Review >Premiere Jessica Letkemann
Isn't quite self-aware enough to be really funny, and certainly isn't serious or genuinely exciting enough to be thrilling because of it's action.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Poseidon is a sodden saga, with a script that is awash in clichés. It nearly drowns under the weight of its own soggy tedium.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
An utterly empty-skulled genre mechanism and nothing more.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
If this version had been called The Poseidon Adventure, audiences could have sued for truth in packaging.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A deeply dreadful movie -- no, a shallowly dreadful movie -- that's too unpleasant and repetitive to be entertaining, even as camp.
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It's all so much blood and brine signifying nothing, not even a good time. Now somebody do us all a favor and cut that albatross from around Petersen's neck already.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 75 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
chelsea gave it a10:
This movie was soo intense! some parts made me cry. but i couldn't find anything wrong with it. and plus josh lucas is sexy which is good enough for me !
Brad B. gave it a7:
Petersen gets a lot out of his actors, atleast it felt like they all could be close to death at any time. For some reason, and maybe because of the disaster film label that started with the first one in'72, I think the movie got a bit of a bad rap. I noticed that Dreyfus had nothing to do with the special feature interviews. Better than the original, and without the campy dialogue.
Bethan S gave it a10:
This film is great it has nail biting moments and great actors like Josh Lucas. I don't know how any one could not like this film people have worked really hard on this film putting a lot of effort in and they sure pulled it off. One of the best moments in the film is when they are climbing through the vent it is so realistic. Characters Dylan, Eleana and Nelson make that a great scene. I could watch it again and again and never get tired of it.
Stephanie G. gave it a10:
I loved this movie so much! I thought that the "edge of your seat moments" were awesome, especially when Richard Nelson was almost crushed by the elevator or Dylan Johns was almost sucked into the propeller tube trying to shove the tank of gas into it. I know everyone has their own opinion but I can't see how you could possibly not like the movie! I never have seen the original but I heard that the special affects are a lot more advanced and realistic. I really enjoyed the movie and I hope my comment was helpful.
Peter J. gave it a5:
The beginning of the movie was great, but the rest of it was predictably boring at best. I actually left the room a few times without pausing it. I was expecting a better story line. You knew exactly what was going to happen.
Alex C. gave it a7:
I liked the movie very much. It was so thrilling that i was shaking for most of it. But I noticed that the actors were like swimming in water the whole time which was kind of weird because, if you think about, the boat had lots of electricity. When you were a child, didn't you ever hear the saying "Water and Electricity don't mix." In other words, nobody should had been alive at the end of the movie. The instant they dived in the water they should have died. John B. was right. This actually did look like a Fear Factor show. Especially when they were in the tanks when they were flooding.
Jessica W. gave it a10:
Ok. I understand everyone has different opinions, thats fine. Personally, I thought the movie was one of the best I've ever seen and am now completely obsessed with it. Plus, Fergie was great. But, to those of you saying, "It was nothing like the original Poseidon," let me ay this. If this movie were like the original, it would be boring. It's so much more modern and the ship is more beautiful. I thought the effects were great, Woldgang spent so much money on the effects and if anyone watched the special features, his intentions were to make this Poseidon completely different from the original. He wanted the main idea of a ship sinking from a rogue wave with a few people trying to survive. I found the movie very interesting and I just wanted to let all of you negative reviewers know of his intentions. :)
