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'Poseidon' is all wet

"Poseidon" is insta-camp. Just add water. Tons of water.

This pitching, sloshing showboat of liquid catastrophe sails the seas of self-seriousness only to be capsized by squalls of unintended laughs. Dear oceanfarers, we are not laughing with you.

Warner Bros. Pictures 'Poseidon' 1 out of 5 stars Director: Wolfgang Petersen Starring: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Andre Braugher, Mía Maestro, Mike Vogel, Dylan Johns Run time: 99 minutes Release date: May 12, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for intense prolonged sequences of disaster and peril. See showtimes Dive in! Preview the action in "Poseidon" with these stills from the movie. Ship shape Atlanta Journal-Constitution film critic Bob Longino compares the "Poseidon" movies side-by-side. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Poseidon'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Splash, crash, tee-hee. With tiny nods to Irwin Allen's 1972 "The Poseidon Adventure," which, like the new movie, is based on Paul Gallico's novel, "Poseidon" shows what happens when a humongous wave flips upside-down a 20-story luxury liner in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of well-heeled vacationers and minimum-wage ship employees are taken out in a single salty gulp, leaving behind a ragtag band of plucky survivors determined to get to the bottom of things.

Literally to the bottom. The ship, named Poseidon, is now on its back. Our heroic octet needs to get from the vessel's ceiling, where they now stand, to its bottom, which peeks out of the water like a sunbather's belly. Crushing volumes of water are seeping into the boat's innards. Flash fires are blazing. They must move quickly to prevent doing a David Blaine on us.

Oh-so conveniently, the drenched group represents a virtual Village People of occupations — The Navy Guy, The Fireman, The Architect — who know their way around construction, ships and flames, and are good at yelling.

And so starts the game of 'who will die first.' The stowaway, played by Mía Maestro? Richard Dreyfuss' whiny gay man? The buck-toothy little boy? (No way. The kid never dies.) Emmy Rossum and her hapless fiancé, Mike Vogel? Tough guys Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas?

Director Wolfgang Petersen, who knows water-logged peril (the infinitely superior "Das Boot" and "The Perfect Storm"), holds off on icing them. First he gets rid of pesky bit players to prep our taste for blood. Think of them as appetizers.

Like the '72 movie, which suddenly assumes the glow of a masterpiece, the drama starts on New Year's Eve in the ship's gilded ballroom, where tuxedos and strapless dresses spin on the dance floor and Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas belts like, oh, Celine Dion.

Then arrives the most literal party crasher ever. Relentless and irrefutably computer-animated, a tidal wave barrels toward the ship. It rolls the liner over like a log, shooting water and glass and debris through the ballroom. Scores of revelers die on the spot, yet all I could think about were the piles of ruined dry cleaning.

From there, with the eight survivors, the movie is all shriek and scramble ("Hang on!"), broken pipes, dangling wires, fire and flood ("Start swimming!") that create an obstacle course of deadly challenges ("Grab my ankle!"), forcing the characters to swing, sweat, crawl and clamber, while the ship moans and groans like the song of the humpback whale ("Don't look down!") as it slowly sinks (You're halfway there!").

"Poseidon" is about nothing so much as the constricting thrill of survival in the face of insurmountable odds. It champions rejecting authority in the name of individual will, as well as strength in numbers, embracing both Darwinian code and the virtues of team work.

Yet if stressful situations foster human bonding, they also generate friction. Personalities clash and words are had. At times, the cast comes off like the bickering roommates on "Big Brother." Next, they're laughing and hugging, having defied death once again.

These emotional displays and dribbles of back story are all we learn about the impromptu heroes, because Petersen rips through such action-movie irritants as exposition and character development, going straight to scenes of magnificent implausibility. "Poseidon" speeds with reckless disregard for imaginative writing, thoughtful acting and pretty CGI effects. The ship's mountainous exterior is entirely computer generated but still looks like a toy in a tub.

More than 30 years after the original version, you'd expect a spectacular state-of-the-art update. But there's something abrupt and low-fi about the affair, a cheap, "Love Boat"-y sterility that's an ill fit in a summer mega-flick.

Impressively, "Poseidon" surpasses the first film's sizable camp quotient with its accidental hilarity and hokum. How we miss Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine and, bless her, Shelley Winters. I doubt we'll ever miss Josh Lucas, who, along with us, is trapped in this sinking boat. Glub, glub.