01. Josh Lucas is a hottie. And he spends most of the movie being both heroic and wet, so yeah.
02. This movie really played on the whole “women and machinery do not mix” thing whereby the women were absolutely useless, flailed and cried a lot, and generally did not contribute much to anything.
03. Kurt Russell died. Yay.
04. I know it’s probably a bad idea to approach a film from the basis of “knowledge” you’ve gained from other films, but these characters act as if they’d never seen Titanic. Jack Dawson, master strategist: look to him as your idol.
05. Richard Dreyfuss was inexplicably the token gay character, which was both not relevant to his character or the plot nor particularly interesting aside from the huge piece of bling he wore in his left ear.
06. They badly needed a script doctor. Tom Stoppard, mainly because I kept thinking of Dreyfuss as The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and wanted him to deliver the “every exit is an entrance somewhere else” line, which would have been fitting for their mad escape.
07. I love stupid inexplicable plot points that remain stupid and inexplicable, especially when the characters specifically say as much.
Kid: *is trapped in some sort of cage as the water steadliy rises around him*
Me and my Mom: WTF, how did he even get in there?
Kid’s Mom: Baby, how did you even get in there?
Kid: I don’t know, but I’m really scared!
*facepalm*
08. That water would have been really freaking cold. Maybe not as cold as the mid-Atlantic in mid-April, but still, these people would have been a little blue in the face.
09. Each character that died was entirely too predictable, of course. These are the people who tried to escape the boat:
- Latino wait staff
- Latina (and Christian!) stowaway
- obnoxious misogynistic drunk
- token gay senior citizen
- ex-firefighter and ex-mayor of New York
- the daughter of the aforementioned ex-firefighter and ex-mayor of New York
- the all-American boyfriend of the the daughter of the aforementioned ex-firefighter and ex-mayor of New York
- some sort of mysterious ex-Navy Seal all around Saviour
- hot, single, and terribly rich mother
- the precocious son of the hot, single, and terribly rich mother
Guess. Come on, guess! Yup, the Latino waiter died first, followed by the drunk, followed by the stowaway. Naturally, one of the “good” guys has to die, so the hero firefighter/mayor has to die in the line of duty, sacrificing himself for the good of everyone else.
The drunk was Kevin Dillon, however I cannot see him in any film without thinking of him as “Bunny” from Platoon.
10. WTF was Fergie from Black Eyed Peas doing in this movie? The fact that she was Fergie rather than some unknown lounge singer meant she got way too much screen time and inexplicably got to snuggle up to Andre Braugher in times of woe.
Essentially, it was about half as long and consequently half as fun as Titanic. But that’s what happens when you don’t have Billy Zane proclaiming at the beginning “GOD HIMSELF COULD NOT SINK THIS SHIP!”