I really need to stop wasting my time on crap: "Poseidon"

What, you were expecting some kind of pun, pop culture reference or other attempt at cleverness? Tough. I was sick this weekend, and this movie isn't worth the seconds it would take to come up with a zippy line.

You may recall a post a while back on "The Poseidon Adventure," the first incarnation of this tale of a cruise ship turned upside down. That wasn't anything great, believe me, but you could forgive it and its rampant cheesiness as part of that unfortunate wave (pun intended ... happy now?) of '70s disaster movies. Why someone wanted to update it, even in this fantastic CGI world, is beyond me. Yet update it, Wolfgang Petersen did.

As you know, Petersen became big with Western audiences through Das Boot, then went on to make some decent stuff, i.e. "In the Line of Fire" and "Air Force One." Heck, I didn't think "Outbreak" was that bad, and I'll confess "Enemy Mine" as a guilty pleasure of sorts. Come on, like it isn't cool to see Louis Gossett Jr. in all that alien makeup.

Petersen also has had some misfires, such as "Troy" and "The Perfect Storm." But hey, at least they looked good, right? I think he was going for the same thing in "Poseidon," but it fails on even that level. Oh, it's neat enough to see the giant wave topple the big boat. After that, though ... nothing special. As a ragtag band of passengers heads up -- formerly down -- to freedom, it was just run of the mill explosions, water and other assorted mayhem. Or maybe it wasn't. All I know is that at no time did I think, "Whoa, that's a cool effect." OK, one time, but that was Fergie's cleavage.

As for the passengers, well, it's a questionable lot. Josh Lucas, who I've always considered to be Matthew McConaughey Lite (not a good thing), is his usual charismaless self here, this time as the young ne'er-do-well who turns out to be not that bad. Kurt Russell is a brave dad, who also happens to be the former mayor of New York City. His daughter, Emmy Rossum, is annoying. Richard Dreyfuss is a gay guy who just got his heart broken. Jacinda "Real World London" Barrett is a single mom. Her kid is annoying, too. And so on.

Yeah, if you thought the original Poseidonites/ians/ers were silly, here's a worse group. In fact, I can think of one scene that was kind of cool, and -- morbid as this might be -- it was when someone drowned. It actually seemed kind of real to me, and scarier than any of the pyrotechnics and rushing water that otherwise dominated the movie. Believe it or not, Wolfgang, sometimes less is more.