HUMORLESS APPROACH HELPS SINK `POSEIDON'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

I really admired ``Poseidon.'' Not as good as really getting into it, I know. But it's something.

From its 480-degree-or-so opening CGI shot -- that's up from under the sea and all around the decks of the title cruise ship -- to the imposing hydraulics of its massive flooding scenes Wolfgang Petersen's state-of-the-art survival game is an engineering marvel. ``The Poseidon Adventure,'' Irwin Allen's 1972 disaster movie that provided the template for this (and most of the genre entries that have come in between them), looks rinky-dink by comparison.

And yet, that was part of the original's charm. The effects were bathtub level, the acting was bathetic, ``The Morning After'' was unlistenable (naturally, it won the best song Oscar). The current version even boasts the hip concept of the Black Eyed Peas' Fergie as the ship's New Year's Eve entertainment. But what it doesn't have are the irritatingly memorable characters and sheer sense of upside-down fun the corny '70s version drowned in.

Instead, Petersen applies the same straight-ahead, live-or-die humorlessness that has marked the German director's other oceangoing epics, ``Das Boot'' and ``The Perfect Storm.'' Here, when a ``rogue wave'' flips the boat, hull over superstructure, it's a nonstop, climb-and-swim trek from the soon-to-be-inundated ballroom to the propeller shafts. Every moment of this presents new physical challenges and explosive perils. But there's no time to stop and smell ... er, that is, to admire the surreal splendor of, say, a ceiling full of inverted toilets, their seats dangling down like nooses.

There is something more realistic about Petersen's approach, of course. When the ship is sinking, who gives a drowned rat about how strange it all looks -- or, for that matter, what individual members of your dwindling survivors' cadre are really like.

The cast includes Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Josh Lucas, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett and Mia Maestro. One's a gambler, one's a stowaway, one's a homosexual whose lifelong boyfriend just dumped him, one used to be mayor of New York and, I think, a fireman ... Doesn't matter who's who, neither to the feckless deity who decides which of them will sink or swim nor to anybody watching, because once the ship flips, character development ends and has virtually no impact on events anyway.

For some reason, this does not lend the same chilling, thrilling effect to ``Poseidon'' that the deliberately anonymous ``United 93'' achieved. Maybe that has something to do with that one being thoroughly believable, while this giant robot, for all its mechanical efficiency, just isn't very.

But one thing ``Poseidon'' does share with ``United'' and the last ``Mission: Impossible'' entry is unflagging momentum. In their very different ways, all three spring films get up to kinetic/dramatic speed early on, and their pacing never falters. That isn't necessarily the greatest of cinematic achievements, but it is hard to do and, more often than not, it doesn't get done right.

With tons of rushing water, expert stunt work and superb integration of digital awesomeness, Petersen keeps the ride that is ``Poseidon'' chugging right along. But like most sinking ships, it's a story about a trip to nowhere.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

POSEIDON - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mike Vogel, Mia Maestro, Kevin Dillon, Jimmy Bennett.

Director: Wolfgang Petersen.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Technically impressive update of ``The Poseidon Adventure'' never fully thrills, as sketchy shipboard characters' fates just don't seem to matter that much. You kind of miss all the absurdist upside-down gags in the cheesier original, too.

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Photo:

When a luxury passenger liner capsizes during a colossal tidal wave, its passengers must fend for themselves in ``Poseidon.''