Konterr Brilliant and touching

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

SnoopyStyle Captain Mike Turner (Michael Caine) pilots his tug boat with Wilbur Hubbard (Karl Malden) and Celeste Whitman (Sally Field) to salvage the Poseidon after it capsized. They arrive to be joined by rival Stefan Svevo (Telly Savalas) and his crew tracking the SOS. The combined group enters the ship and finds survivors as well as treasure. Frank Mazzetti (Peter Boyle) is desperate to find his daughter. Gina Rowe (Shirley Jones) is the nurse. Suzanne Constantine (Veronica Hamel) is a damsel in a ball gown. There are more survivors and more discoveries.This is the definition of an unnecessary sequel. Where did the first survivors go? Are they the first ones on board? A sequel could work if it's from other survivors' journey after the ballroom got flooded. Instead, this proposes random ships out in the middle of the ocean. Stefan and Suzanne's connection makes no sense. That whole premise is outlandish. The treasure hunt has no drama. The big stars are meaningless when the premise is so stupid to begin with.

wes-connors After a handful of survivors from "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) leave the scene, the upturned ocean liner remains slightly afloat. Two small boats arrive to continue the disaster. One is led by financially-strapped captain Michael Caine (as Mike Turner). He arrives with Africa-bound Sally Field (as Celeste "Monkey" Whitman) and secretive sidekick Karl Malden (as Wilbur Hubbard). They decide to enter the Poseidon's bottom and salvage the luxury liner's collection of money, gold and jewels. It is a dangerous mission, but Mr. Caine reminds us, "The Andrea Doria stayed up for more than ten hours." Ms. Field claims to have stayed up longer. Also entering the capsized ship is a small "rescue" crew led by sneaky Telly Savalas (as Stefan Svevo). And, there are more survivors on board. Former "Partridge Family" mom Shirley Jones looks especially beautiful in a wet hairstyle...When his disastrous bee movie "The Swarm" (1978) bombed, producer-director Irwin Allen decided it was time to return to one of his greatest adventures. This film adds a terrorist to the mix, but it is more like a re-make of the first movie. The vaguely familiar plot mechanics were funnier in Lucille Ball's excellent episode "Lucy Gets Jack Benny's Account" (1967) and more imaginative in Mr. Allen's "Lost in Space" episode "Trip Through the Robot" (also 1967). You even get Allen's "Penny Robinson" castaway Angela Cartwright in a supporting role, looking gorgeous and grown-up. Alas, "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" doesn't go beyond, it goes back. Many of the best shots look like outtakes from the original film and the stunts are actually all revisions from "The Poseidon Adventure", without Shelley Winters. If you haven't seen the original, it's excellent fun. This one is just okay.***** Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979-05-18) Irwin Allen ~ Michael Caine, Sally Field, Telly Savalas, Karl Malden

Equinox1772 I am a huge fan of disaster/peril movies. In the movies I have a tendency to analyze the technical aspects of whats happening as opposed to paying attention to the characters. I'm interested in what's physically happening to the ship (or plane, or building, etc.).The original was great! I always had a sense of where the characters were in the ship as they moved up and back towards the stern. You got a sense that the ship was taking water more by the bow and flooding from that direction. The lighting was realistic in that you could obviously tell that the emergency lights were all they had.In 'Beyond', aside from going back in the original hole and into the engine room from the first film, I had no idea where they were going inside the Poseidon. This was frustrating. Also, the lighting was different. Not to mention the obvious blunder flooding situation. What? suddenly the Poseidon has various air pockets on decks we knew to be flooded from the first?? All the while through the first film they are racing to stay ahead of the flooding...where in this one the ship seems to have decided to stop sinking for a while. The large explosions are never explained although I just reason they are the boilers reacting to the water hitting them (which may also account for the whole engine room exploding finally in the end. We saw something similar to this in the new version. Another thing, in the beginning of the film they show a storm and big waves, then the Poseidon gets capsized, then we see the Jenny caught in the same big storm. This implies that the Poseidon was capsized because of the storm instead of how it actually happened, a sudden tidal wave while in CALM seas. Oh well! So for these reasons this movie doesn't quite fit, but, since it is still an upside-down ship in peril, with explosions and suspense, I still liked it.

stalzz64 4 Oscar winners, Karl Malden, Sally Field, Shirley Jones, Michael Caine. Great character actors Telly Savalas and Peter Boyle. 1 hour 54 minutes of sheer tedium, melodrama and horrible acting, a mess of a script, and a sinking feeling of GOOD LORD, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?Irwin Allen was just trying to cash in on the popularity of the original classic disaster film with a grade D minus script, the actors were obviously just in it for the paycheck as well,... the horror, the horror!How insane are the characters that Caine, Savalas, Malden and Field are playing? Go into a potentially deadly sinking ship that's 1. on fire 2. Hot from steam 3. Slippery from water and oil, 4. boilers that are exploding every 5 minutes, etc., all for the love of money? Greed? 5. They have very little equipment, not even a pair of gloves or work boots in sight, much less a grappling hook, rope, etc.Stupidity!What were they thinking?Peter Boyle overacts so much that I just wanted to smack him! Stop it! And what's the deal with the bad toupee? Also, there is no way you can believe his character was a WW2 veteran.Caine, Field and Malden find all that gold and money and they are happy--whoopee! We're rich! (We may not live to spend it, but hey...)And yee haw, it's the great character actor Slim Pickens!Survivors galore! Jack Warden and Shirley Knight, too!The final dramatic sub plot about that scary plutonium never really went anywhere, it's like they forgot, sort of? Lots of holes in the script.This film has an illness that the strongest pill couldn't cure. I'm surprised Alan J. Smithee's name wasn't on the script, I'd be embarrassed to have penned this one!Oh the insanity, Oh The humanity! Oy Vey!The Horror, The Horror!It's like a bad two hour TV movie.At least the sets were made from recycled material from the first movie.The script needed to be on the compost heap...