The Poseidon Adventure (1972): B-

As cheesy as some Velveeta-slathered movie theater nachos, The Poseidon Adventure may not have been producer Irwin Allen’s finest effort (that designation still goes to The Towering Inferno), but it’s nonetheless a noteworthy entry in that most goofy of ‘70s-era genres: the star-studded disaster flick. When the Poseidon luxury liner is turned upside-down by a giant wave, New Age-y Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) convinces a group of survivors – played by Ernest Borgnine, Roddey McDowall, Stella Stevens, Red Buttons, and Shelly Winters in a hilarious turn as Jewish grandmother who can’t keep from commenting on her own obesity – to try and escape the sinking vessel by climbing through its many treacherous levels. Despite its cast alternating between overacting with relish one moment and appearing completely disinterested the next, the peril-laden film does have some flashes of inspiration, the highlight being an extended sequence in which Winters and company risk life and limb to swim through a water-filled passageway. Too often, however, director Ronald Neame’s staging of his central set pieces is about as inert as the performances of hot pants-wearing Pamela Sue Martin and precocious tyke Eric Shea. And though there’s a high camp quotient in Buttons consoling a distraught young woman, Borgnine gruffly yelling at his retired hooker wife, and Hackman’s insanely lame death sequence, Poseidon is unfortunately neither as exciting nor as unintentionally funny as one would like it to be.