Chadzilla ROARS!!!

The Happening (2008)

"There is an event happening..."

At 8:33 in the morning, the people inside Central Park begin killing themselves.  As the "happening" spreads to other cities and increasingly smaller towns, High School science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), along with the daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez) of a friend (John Leguizamo), struggle to escape the deadly fallout...

I heard the Siren Song of Crap loud and clear long before all the hate for M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening started bubbling across the Internet.  Hell, seeing the film's teaser trailer for the very first time was more than enough to let me know to set my expectations very, very low for this movie.  But I love this kind of stuff, so my seeing it on the Big Screen was a foregone conclusion.  I also knew that going to see a movie that I expected to be bad could lead me to think/feel that the movie wasn't "all that bad" when it was over.  Well, that wasn't the case with The Happening, it is every bit as bad as you have heard it to be.  It is to trees what Maximum Overdrive was to trucks and Irwin Allen's Production of The Swarm was to killer bees.

Writer/Producer/Director M. Night Shyamalan has reportedly stated that The Happening is his attempt at making an old fashioned "B-movie."  A statement that sadly echoes writer/director Stephen King's description of his own Maximum Overdrive as a "Moron Movie."  Fans like me know this kind of movie, they cluttered up drive-in and grindhouse theaters until the middle to late seventies, when the burgeoning video market gave them an all new home.  Many of those very same movies are now on DVD and are currently taking up ample amounts of shelf space on my DVD rack.  The big difference is that those movies were not self-conscious about their B-movie moronity, they were just movies slapped together by people of varying degrees of talent.  Some worked, most didn't.  More often than not, they were movies ripping off other successful movies in order to fulfill market demand.  They were not the vanity projects of talented, or semi-talented, filmmakers trying to muffle the fact that they had made a bad movie by saying they did it on purpose.  Statements like that ring false because no one wants to make a bad movie and they are bad for business because no one wants to pay ten bucks to see a bad movie.  Just try and make the best, most entertaining movie that you can and don't try to hide your failure by stating you did it on purpose.  It makes me distrust you as an artist.

There were a few elements of The Happening that I did like.  Shyamalan the director still knows how to build an atmosphere of creeping dread (the character of Mrs. Jones is a textbook example of that talent) and, for a few minutes, he delivers on the far too overhyped R-rated apocalyptic mayhem.  Sad to say, but there wasn't anywhere near enough of that mayhem to create the horror necessary to drive the film's central events.

Now, did you notice that I wrote "central events" instead of story?  M. Night Shyamalan the writer fails to come up with a compelling story to anchor the events that follow the opening act.  We just get an hour or so of various underdeveloped characters running from Point A to Point B and on to Point C with absolutely nothing to do but fall victim to the suicide inducing neurotoxin.  There is a hint of a marriage problem between Elliot and Alma, but it is laughably contrite.  If Shyamalan thinks that a minor misunderstanding between a husband and wife makes for compelling drama, I don't see anything of interest happening in his future offerings.

Meteor (1979)

"That meteor is five miles wide and it's definitely going to hit us!"

When a newly discovered comet hits the largest chunk of rock in the asteroid belt, the impact creates a huge meteor on a collision course with Earth.  Can the Soviet Union and the United States set aside their political differences and mutual mistrust long enough to avert a catastrophe that could not only bring about a new Ice Age, but the end of life as we know it?  They have five days in which to do that very thing...

A short while ago, movie geeks across the Internet were grumbling about the many plot similarities between Michael Bay's bombastic science-fiction flick The Island and the seventies cult favorite Parts: The Clonus Horror.  I wasn't hanging around the Internet back in 1998, but I do wonder if those very same geeks would have been grumbling about the many similarities between Bay's bombastic science-fiction turd Armageddon and 1979's Meteor.  Both films feature the destruction of a space station, both films destroy New York and Hong Kong, and both films feature the use of nuclear weapons as the hammer to break apart an enormous lump of space rock that is threatening to end life on Earth.

Meteor dropped into theaters, courtesy of American International Pictures, yes that American International Pictures, during the disaster movie's final, inglorious days.  The novelty of watching an all star cast attempt to survive some spectacular mega-catastrophe had pretty much worn off and, thanks in large part to the disastrous reception to Irwin Allen's laughable production of The Swarm, the genre was pretty much box office poison by that point.  What I find most interesting about the final three disaster movies released in 1979 is how they all share a connection with the films that started the disaster film craze in the early part of the 1970s.  The Concorde: Airport '79 was the final film in the Airport series.  Irwin Allen, undaunted by the failure of The Swarm, attempted to bounce back with Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, a sequel to his trendsetting hit The Poseidon Adventure.  Ronald Neame, the director of the first Poseidon Adventure, was Meteor's guiding hand.  Of the three films, Meteor is the best.  But that is not saying all that much.

For a movie in which the fate of the world hangs from the frayed thread of Cold War era politics, Meteor is surprisingly free of suspense.  Most of the movie is concerned with whether or not the United States and the Soviet Union can 1) admit that they have nuclear bombs in space, 2) agree to work together, and 3) trust each other when doing so.  Considering that, if they don't, the world will end, the endless series of meetings and discussions and yelling and screaming about working with them seems an odd focus for dramatic tension.  Even the movie seems to know this, for there is a moment when NASA honcho Karl Malden tells paranoid general Martin Landau to write of a report, make copies of it, distribute it, and then schedule meetings about it.  "By that time, the meteor will have hit and it will be all over!"

Of course, being a disaster movie, their has to be some misfortune other than a lump of rock that looks to be inching through space.  So the lump of rock has little splinters that precede it and cause all manner of problems, from distracting light shows in the skies, to devastating avalanches and tidal waves.  Since these events all involve characters introduced moments before their deaths, and who do not figure into the main plot at all, it is hard to care all that much about them.  It is only when a splinter threatens to disrupt the critical launch of the American nukes that the movie generates some true tension.

The visual effects in Meteor are a mixed bag of tricks that range from somewhat impressive to horridly amateurish.  I don't know if this is correct or not, but I remember hearing about production troubles with the film.  Evidently they ran out of money at one point, which might explain why the destruction of New York is comprised of stock footage of controlled building demolitions.

The pacing of the film is off as well, with several scenes in need of a good tightening.  Meteor is only one hour and forty-seven minutes long, but it plays as if its running time were well over two hours.  The fact that the meteor splinters don't start causing any problems until an hour into the movie doesn't help either.  Another memory I have of the film's release is of the local paper's review, which made note about how slow the meteor itself moved.  It is hard to take the meteor seriously as a threat when it appears to be moving only a little faster than your average garden snail.

While fans of seventies cinema cheese might find something to enjoy in Meteor, I did, those wanting a little more disaster in their disaster movie would be better served by watching The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, or even Earthquake, all of which have more to offer than Meteor.

Poseidon (2006)

"There's nothing fair about who lives and who dies."

Shortly after midnight, while a New Year's celebration is in full swing, a rogue wave capsizes the luxury liner Poseidon.  A small group of survivors, led by Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas, Glory Road) and Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell, Escape from New York), defies the Captain (Andre Braugher, Homicide) and attempts to climb through the bowels of the rapidly sinking ship to reach the propeller shaft, and possible rescue.  The journey is far from an easy one, and many in the group do not survive the perilous journey.

This high octane remake/re-imagining of Irwin Allen's classic trend-setting disaster thriller, The Poseidon Adventure, easily surpasses the first film in terms of spectacle, but it falls far short in managing to create anything that even comes close to resembling a dramatic story. 

Allen's version, directed by Ronald Neame (Meteor, and others), was filled with colorful, albeit thinly sketched, characters played with robust glee by its solid cast.  This new version, directed by Wolfgang Petersen (The Perfect Storm, and others), never slows down enough to have Josh Lucas and Kurt Russell bark and snarl at each other in the memorable manner that Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine did in the original.  In fact, Lucas and Russell both seem rather sedate between all the narrow escapes, and neither fights with the other for the leadership position.  Rather, when one falls to the wayside, the other steps up to help solve any number of the dozen or so problems that keep popping up.  This actually helps Poseidon form an identity that is different from its predecessor.  And, in the end, that is a good thing.

Another good thing, in fact it's a great thing, are the special effects, which are genuinely special.  The capsizing of the Poseidon is shown in far greater detail than was possible in 1972.  Allen and Neame worked wonders with a model ship, inventive camera angles, and a set that was able to tilt up to forty-five degrees.  Petersen and the magicians at ILM work miracles.  This is the Xtreme version, with CGI allowing furniture, passengers, and all sorts of debris to go sliding, then flying, across the decks, rooms, and corridors as the ship slowly flips over.  What was once implied can now be graphically shown: the explosions in the engine room, the flash fire in the galley, and dozens of screaming passengers sliding along the deck and into the ocean as the liner rolls over.  It's a sequence so huge and awesome that I want run out and see it again, right now.  Which is exactly the reaction I am sure Warner Brothers was hoping for.

I walked into Poseidon fully expecting to see a spectacle-over-substance disaster movie done mega-buck style.  It delivered, and then some.  So I walked out of the theater a happy and satisfied customer.  Just go in knowing that the movie is more of a middle of the road disaster epic, like Earthquake, than it is the genre high water mark that was the original Poseidon Adventure.  Enjoy.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

"We've turned over."

Just after the stroke of midnight, while a New Year's celebration is in full swing, a rogue seismic wave capsizes the luxury liner S.S. Poseidon.  Led by the renegade Reverend Scott (Gene Hackman) a small group of survivors struggles to reach the hull of the ship, and possible rescue.  The journey is not an easy one and many in the group will not make it to the hull.

Considering the local weather problems I wondered if my annual New Year's Eve viewing of The Poseidon Adventure could be considered a decision of poor taste.  I decided that tradition was tradition and I sat down and watched it.  Severe storm or no severe storm, it remained a damn entertaining film.

Based on Paul Gallico's novel, The Poseidon Adventure is one of the very first of the "Disaster Movies" that swamped the cinemas of the seventies.  It seemed that, at the time, a great deal of people were willing to pay good money to see a cluster of recognizable faces getting dirty and then killed in spectacular ways.  Well, they were willing until 1979 came along, when the disaster movie craze more or less ended with the combined box office failures of The Concorde: Airport '79 and Irwin Allen's miscalculated sequel, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

Watching The Poseidon Adventure again, I realized that the movie was a pretty good representation of life.  One minute you're doing  great, you're on top of the world.  The next thing you know, you're flying around on your ass and then the world is on top of you.  Now you have to climb to the top all over again.  The pattern gets tiresome after awhile and, like the characters in the movie, one wonders if the payoff is even worth the effort of getting there.  The Poseidon Adventure says it is.  I tend to agree, though I do have my moments of doubt.

Like many movies based on books, I did not read Paul Gallico's novel until after I had seen the movie version several times on network television.  It was a pleasant surprise to find that movie is actually quite faithful to the book, though it does discard some of the book's darker elements.  Especially those revolving around Reverend Scott and the young boy, Robin (Eric Shea).  While each character has something to define them (Robin knows a lot about the ship, Mrs. Rosen (Shelley Winters) complains about her weight and how it will slow everybody down, etc.), none of them are as deep as in the novel.  About the only thing that does survive from the novel is the Christ symbolism that surrounds Reverend Scott.  Scott is clearly obsessed with proving he doesn't need God all that much, that, in fact, God needs him more.  Like in the book, he is a man who believes in self will over God's will.  In a nice touch, whenever he breaks into his "Get off your knees and be strong, help yourself" sermon, he adds "...and help others" almost as a reluctant after thought.  The ship's chaplain (Arthur O'Connell) even calls Scott on it at one point.  However, unlike in the book, Scott takes each loss of life as a personal failure on his part and refuses to let anybody succumb to the desire to stay behind.  He is determined to save as many lives as he can, in the book it was more a question of who is truly worthy of surviving.  (The Scott of the novel is also more than willing to leave stragglers behind to fend for themselves.)

Even though the darker aspects of the characters have been shorn away, this does not make the film any less effective as a simple entertainment.  Just watching them struggling to survive a seemingly hopeless situation makes for a quick and suspense filled two hours.

The movie's big moment is, of course, when the ship itself capsizes.  (Heck, the capsizing is the main selling point of Wolfgang Petersen's big budget remake.)  A special platform was built that allowed the set to tilt some forty-five degrees, thus making the illusion that the ship was flipping over all the more easy to believe.  Even after over thirty years, it's still an impressive moment, arguably the Disaster Movie genre's best capturing of a catastrophe on screen.  Quick enough to make the disaster disorienting, but still enough attention to detail for the audience to gaze on in wonder at the spectacle playing out before them.  Compare it with the ten minute earthquake in Earthquake or the incendiary bombast of The Towering Inferno's mega-explosions (or the increasingly ludicrous disasters that befell the 747s in the Airport series), you'll see what I mean.

The Poseidon Adventure was the first true disaster movie, and it's still the best of the bunch.