Week Of May 8, 2006 - How We Watch Week - Mon / Wed / Fri

May 10, 2006

I was going to try to explain why people still go to the movie theater to see films today… but a good reason to stay home got in the way.

"He's creating suction!"

The line comes late in the movie, and it's not referring to Wolfgang Petersen, but…

I went to the IMAX screening of Poseidon with the hope that size would matter. And unfortunately, it mattered a lot, not very unlike the way it mattered on a regular screen. The personalities of most of the actors were too small to register. There were too many alpha-male leads to fit into the movie comfortably. And the script had to be just the right size to be pulled out of the ass of the screenwriter, because I can't imagine where else is came from.

The only marginal advantage over M:I3 that Poseidon has is that it is really short (Just about 90 minutes even) and, even though it is evidence of how emotionally impotent the film is, there is a lack of the weepy, whinny woeful shots of Tom Cruise overemoting.

But there is a problem here that is shared by both films. They are both, ultimately, built on the idea of individuals that are brought together under extreme circumstances and overcome the odds together. Of course, in the Mission:Impossible film series, that idea has been skewed by Tom Cruise's superstardom. Still, the first entry was closer to that idea and the second more than this third one.

As I was sitting through Poseidon again, I was thinking about why I love the first film so much. And it's because I loved that family. Two married couples, a brother and sister, a macho turtleneck wearing priest, a sweet little old man, and a ship's steward. Instant empathy. One of the couples is obnoxious and fighting, but you know they love each other and you feel how much the husband wants to be a man for his wife. The brother and sister have already lost their parents. Could you find more personality than in Red Buttons, Shelly Winters, and Jack Albertson? And f-ing Gene Hackman! You're set for the hunt. Put that crew in an action film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and you have a cash machine.

So what do we get instead? A father, a daughter, and her heavy-duty male love interest. A card shark who shows sexual interest - and little else - in the two other women in the group. One of those women has a child, though…well, I'll get into that in a moment. Another single guy who is the comedy jackass. A pretty female stowaway with no real connection to anyone, though she is being helped by the boat employee, who seems like he is trying to get her into bed. And an older man who is unique in that he has a variation that I will not mention because it is a minor spoiler… that said, though the character strikes up small alliances, the primary significance of the character comes from being in Richard Dreyfus' body.

Let me offer one truly minor SPOILER… which is minor only because of the troubles of the movie. So here is a second warning…okay… Richard Dreyfus' character is climbing up on the railing to, in theory, jump off the side of the boat when he sees "The Wave." That's not a bad idea. A guy who is suicidal is forced to fight for his life and in the process, come to value his life again. But the movie, for all intents and purposes, lets it drop completely.

SPOILER OVER

But why is this movie all about single people? Four men with no attachments, one with an ex-wife (apparently… it is unspoken), a single mother (no mention of dad), and a young single woman. The only thing close to a real romantic relationship are the young couple who love each other. What is that all about? This is a movie that is cut to the bone, all action. So how can relationships be expected to be established so the audience can care when they start in such a disconnected way? Moreover, how can we take a position with the Josh Lucas character when he is "connecting" to both the Mia Maestro and the Jacinda Barrett characters?

And now to the worse, kind of painful part… Ms. Barrett, Ms. Rossum, and Mr. Vogel do not have the kinds of personalities that can withstand underwriting like this. They are very pretty and I'm sure they are very nice and they have all offered up decent performances elsewhere. But here, they are brutal. If the studio wanted to hire relatively cheap talent, so be it. But there are actors with much bigger personalities out there.

Put in Anne Hathaway for Emmy Rossum and Eva Mendes or Kelly Preston or even Kate Walsh in for Ms. Barrett and some guy in for Mike Vogel (I might suggest a guy named Nathan Baesel who is on Invasion and was also in Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon, which I saw at SXSW, who would have killed in Vogel's role) and you have improved the movie by 10% right there.

Then you have the double alpha problem. How can you have two male leads in a movie, who are not buddies or rivals? It's crazy, unless you have some genius reason for it. And here, it just sucks. Who are we following, Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas? The answer is Kurt Russell because Lucas is a really good looking guy and a pretty good bad guy when he gets methoded up and he can probably do the McConaughey roles. But as a swaggering male lead, he is a flop. You don't even have to watch Stealth to know this. Just watch him smile and heartily relieved laugh at one late moment in this film and you can't help but to recall the end of 70s TV series that were mocked with fake freezes at the end of Police Squad episodes.

But forget that Russell wins. The movie is screwed because it can't make up its mind. So we keep getting split action scenes, since each guy gets their moments. That, unfortunately, doesn't help us or the storytelling.

Don't even get me started on Freddie Rodriguez doing an Al Pacino imitation. He doesn't get enough screentime to irritate too much.

I don't mind them changing the characters significantly from the original movie. And Wolfgang Petersen can shoot the eyes out of an eagle on a quarter. But the heart of the disaster movie was, well, heart. These were morality tales told on a giant, unstable canvas. The stars were well worn, but they had those big personalities that didn't demand more than a second to define. And the characters were iconic as well. Single mother? Sure. It's a new millennium. But make it interesting. Make her dead husband a hero who the young male lead needs to prove he can match. Ethnic stowaway? Okay. How about making her as conflicted about America as she is beautiful? Secret young romance? Knock her up, for God's sake… give her a reason to live and for her death to be tragic.

There was not one great dramatic speech in the entire film. There are a couple of good beats of heroes making decisions. There is a truly hideous visual punch line to perhaps the single oldest joke in the movies… worse, the outcome of the gag eliminates the one remotely conflictual character in the film all too early.

I was listening to NPR this afternoon and heard two young girls who had won a major award in the cooking world for their internet cooking show. Charming. And it came up that their mom thought they should call their show, "Ham & Cheese," because it so well described the girls. Funny.

I love ham & cheese. I also love movies that are greater than the sum of those two fattening, sloshy, melted parts. Ham & cheese is a certainly kind of movie and I am happily along for the ride.

There is plenty of ham in Poseidon, but they seem to have been skimpy about the cheese. But there is nothing interesting to replace it. A dead serious movie about getting out alive from a sinking ship might have been great. But this was not made that way. This is the kind of movie where a character sees a map in the wall of a cruise ship and takes it off the wall with one hand. It's not reality. It's a prop. It's the kind of a movie where the little kid uses a cross to open a screw faster than reality. Ham. It's ain't Das Boot. It's not even The Perfect Storm, which spends a lot more time than people remember on character.

Opening weekend has nothing to do with quality, as I always say. So maybe, in spite of the tracking in the last two weeks, audiences will find this movie on opening weekend. And to be fair, half the people in the IMAX screening applauded at the end of the film. (By the way, I am sad to report, this was the least special IMAX screening experience I've had and I look forward to Superman Returns in occasional 3D.) But while the experience was not painful, it had none of the joy or heart of the original… even if Petersen remains one of the best action shooters in the game.

Oh well…

E Me: Must what goes up come down?

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