The movie begins on New Year’s Eve Day, much like the original, and leads up to a giant celebration that evening. The various main characters are introduced, and I won’t go into too much detail here because it really doesn’t matter. Again like the original, they have all their stereotypical bases covered. To be fair, disaster movies are always approached with lower expectations in this area. The star of the movie is the disaster, so sometimes the characters are a little more two dimensional.
When a “rogue wave” capsizes the ship, the ballroom is left dry and full of survivors. A small group of renegades led by Dylan (Josh Lucas) decide they are going to climb up and try to escape out of the propeller. Bring on the craziness…oh, and lots of really terrible dialogue.
While the dialogue lacked for realism, I expected this after recently watching the 1972 version which contained similar flaws, including an unbelievable amount of yelling. Seriously, I think Ronald Neame directed his actors to deliver every line in some form of loud fury. But I digress. The worst part of this movie was the obvious product placement of Fergie, excuse me, Stacy Ferguson, from The Black Eyed Peas. It’s quite clear that she had certain stipulations in her contract regarding singing and camera time that are so distracting it is outrageous! Even if you are a huge fan, there is no place for this in cinema. If singers want to act, they should act. Self promotion ad nauseam is NOT acting.
The movie ends with a select few of the original crew surviving. There are no surprises on who dies since the screen writers decided to make it absolutely obvious. This is the movie’s major shortcoming when compared to the original. It was very suspenseful to watch and find yourself shocked at which characters were killed off. What a shame that this couldn’t be duplicated effectively.
I will give a spoiler hint for those of you that are interested. This movie’s character situations are so bad, that it actually steals from Armageddon…right down to the death of one of the characters in an identical scenario. You know your film is lacking when you steal from that movie!
Finally, I would like to send a message to all parents (and I’m laying on the sarcasm pretty thick here). If you are ever faced with a disaster, keep an eye on your freaking children! Is that too much to ask? You put everyone else at risk when you don’t watch them because they inevitably get themselves into situations that you need help saving them from. You also add credibility to really stupid storylines. Thank you.
A fairly entertaining disaster movie with terrible dialogue and predictable action. If you like that sort of thing, enjoy. I give it 2 out of 5 for being visually interesting
By Tina Alexander
