MAYDAY.

On New Year’s Eve, a luxury ocean liner is overturned by a tsunami and a group of survivors try to make it to the bottom of the ship.

On paper it looks as if director Wolfgang Petersen is the right guy to remake The Poseidon Adventure (1972). He makes the movie intermittently exciting, but can’t do anything about the sorry script, which is full of clichéd dialogue and empty characters who are barely introduced to us.

The visual effects are terrific, but there’s so much going on that the actors are given no room to craft compelling performances.

2006-U.S. 99 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Cast: Josh Lucas (Dylan Johns), Kurt Russell (Robert Ramsey), Richard Dreyfuss (Richard Nelson), Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum, Mía Maestro, Kevin Dillon, Fergie, Andre Braugher.

Trivia: Co-produced by Petersen.