TERRORISTS REPLACE TIDAL WAVE IN NEW 'POSEIDON ADVENTURE'.Byline: - David Kronke IF A TV MOVIE aggressively attempts to be mindlessly inane, should one laud it for a job well done? If so, then kudos to NBC's campy remake of '70s disaster flick ``The Poseidon Adventure.'' The original, you may recall, placed Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters (who received an Oscar nomination) and a host of B-list stars upon a luxury ocean liner flipped upside-down by a tidal wave, which is so 20th-century these days. In the new version, tragedy comes as the result of terrorists. Adam Baldwin, playing a Homeland Security agent (we know because he's constantly glowering glow·er intr.v. glow·ered, glow·er·ing, glow·ers To look or stare angrily or sullenly. See Synonyms at frown. n. An angry or sullen look or stare. , militaristic music accompanies his appearance, and his cabin safe harbors a gun, an amenity apparently not available to all patrons), boards the S.S. Poseidon after hearing chatter warning of ``terrorist activity in the Southern hemisphere.'' He's somehow narrowed the threat to this single boat. Turns out he's right, though ship's captain Peter Weller is fatally skeptical. Aboard for some r&r - that's riots and rambunctiousness, not rest and relaxation - is Steve Guttenberg as an unhappily married nebbish neb·bish n. A person regarded as weak-willed or timid. [Yiddish nebekh, poor, unfortunate, of Slavic origin; see bhag- in Indo-European roots. who gets frisky frisk·y adj. frisk·i·er, frisk·i·est Energetic, lively, and playful: a frisky kitten. frisk with the ship's buxom masseuse masseuse /mas·seuse/ (-sldbomacz´) [Fr.] a woman who performs massage. . His son (Rory Copus), an annoyingly precocious Spielberg-wannabe with a digital camera, captures Pop's infidelity for video posterity. When Guttenberg's daughter (Amber Sainsbury) gets seasick, the hunky ship doctor (C. Thomas Howell Christopher Thomas Howell (born December 7, 1966 in Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actor. He appeared in a minor role (credited as Tom Howell) in Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). ) asks, ``Do you feel like going to bed?'' She responds, ``We just met,'' a line so lame even she throws up. Alex Kingston appears as a British intelligence agent monitoring the mayhem with reserved dismay on a distant high-tech set. Terrorists' bombs detonate det·o·nate intr. & tr.v. det·o·nat·ed, det·o·nat·ing, det·o·nates To explode or cause to explode. [Latin d , but instead of sinking the ship, they somehow manage to, yes, turn the tub on its head, re-creating the original's neat spectacle of forcing actors to traverse transverse sets (the original won a special Oscar for its effects work). And if we needed any more reason to despise him, our youthful videographer A person involved in the production of video material. Videographers shoot the images with a video camera (analog or digital) and may perform minimal or extensive editing of the resulting footage. keeps filming as the death toll mounts. Of course, he's not the only one shooting unnecessary footage here. Without commercials, this ``Adventure'' is still 20 minutes longer than the original. Yes, its inane qualities provoke easy laughs, but CBS' recent ``Category 7: The End of the World'' demonstrated that audiences love kooky carnage. David Kronke,(818) 713-3638 david.kronke(at)dailynews.com THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE - Two stars What: Remake of the '70s disaster flick about an upside-down ocean liner. Where: NBC NBC in full National Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. commercial broadcasting company. It was formed in 1926 by RCA Corp., General Electric Co. (GE), and Westinghouse and was the first U.S. company to operate a broadcast network. (Channel 4). When: 8 tonight. In a nutshell: Gleefully idiotic. CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color) A budding videographer (Rory Copus) records the horror around him on his digital camera in a updated-for-the-21st-century ``Poseidon Adventure,'' tonight on NBC. |
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