If it's a good seafarin' yarn ye crave, matey, a fair wind be blowin' your way. Director Wolfgang Petersen has scuttled the 1972 classic The Poseidon Adventure by replacing the 20th century cruise liner with a 17th century pirate ship. The result is Poseidon, a ribald romp of a movie that sprays the poop off the poop deck and puts the “naughty” back in nautical.
Kurt Russell stars as Long Rob Ramsey, the scallywag skipper of the ill-fated Poseidon. Ramsey is a lusty pirate who keeps his crew on their toes with tawdry comments like, “Ye needs to uncork ye bung hole if ye wants a sip o' me grog.” Russell chooses to play Ramsey without the usual pirate prosthetics -- no hooks or peg legs, though he does have a corked nose, having lost his original proboscis during swordplay with a Spanish sailor.
The film begins with the Poseidon sailing gracefully off of the Brigantine Coast, having recently plundered the seaside village at St. Rocco. A rogue wave flips the ship upside-down, killing most of the crew and forcing the survivors trapped in the hull to seek egress from their watery tomb. Those trapped include Ramsey, Corky the chef (Richard Dreyfus, in his meatiest role since Krippendorf's Tribe), Jib Halyard (Andre Braugher) and a couple of wenches (Emmy Rossum and Mia Maestro). Petersen smartly finds ways to keep the wenches out of breath, thus their heaving breasts ever threaten to escape from their damp peasant dresses.
The movie becomes a series of adventures as the survivors struggle from chamber to chamber. One of the many high points occurs when they encounter Gene Hackman, reprising his role as Rev. Frank Scott. Clapped in irons while being gnawed on by bilge rats, the Reverend curses Captain Ramsey in a passionate oration that is hard to follow, frankly, because of the heaving breasts in the damp peasant dresses.
Poseidon is an elegant ode to the tenacity of the human spirit. Ramsey endears himself to the others with courageous pleas to “follow me, ye hearties, and by thunder we shall drink merrily o'er the salty scupper o' life.” The film reminds us that every day is a treasure, and in the smallest of moments one can discover booty.
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