MOVIE 'Poseidon' peril comes in waves

Writers are faithful to the spirit of the original disaster film.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
In an age of ephemera like "The Apprentice," we sometimes forget the pleasure of a big old-fashioned rootin' tootin' adventure disaster melodrama.
"Poseidon Adventure," welcome home.
Unlike the camera crew on "The Apprentice," fiction writers can give us as many stirring life-or-death crises as they can dream up, and writer Bryce Zabel and director John Putch have clearly made it a priority to minimize downtime between moments of extreme peril.
In this, they are faithful to the spirit of the original 1972 cruise-ship-set disaster film "Poseidon Adventure."
In fact, they're faithful to the spirit of disaster movies back to "The Perils of Pauline," though one imagines many viewers will reference the more recent likes of "Titanic."
Large cast
This new "Poseidon" -- airing Sunday at 8 on NBC -- also echoes the original in having a large cast of recognizable stars, though this time it's the contemporary likes of Rutger Hauer, Bryan Brown, C. Thomas Howell and Alex Kingston rather than Shelley Winters and Gene Hackman.
Naturally, the plot has been updated for the 21st century. This time the Poseidon's problem, specifically a gaping hole in the bow that causes it to overturn, has been caused by swarthy Middle Eastern terrorists.
Now there's a novel twist.
The terrorists only set the stage, however, because the heart of "The Poseidon Adventure," then and now, lies in the inspiring courage of ordinary people at moments when life itself is on the line. The plot, not surprisingly, is functional, rather than intricate. The good guys and bad guys are divided into two camps, with no gray between, and the writers don't even bother to spread the Poseidon passengers among ethnic demographics. Pretty much everyone is rich and white.
In the end, "The Poseidon Adventure" has the same appeal on TV as it had in theaters. It's a campfire yarn, a B-movie without pretensions, and it delivers what it promises.