YMMV / Poseidon

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Valentin for being a friendly, helpful and quite good-looking waiter and guide in navigating the ship as well as for being nice enough to smuggle Elena on the ship so that she can see her sick brother in New York. Many viewers were pissed and saddened by his utterly horrific death.
• Ho Yay: Hinted at between Valentin and Richard. Valentin does end up getting it hard not long after, but not at all in a Ho Yay sort of way.
• Narm:
  • Not exactly right off the bat, but when Richard seriously tells Elena to grab a hold of his ankle it's funny when you realize the last time a person (Valentin) tried to hold onto Richard's ankle for dear life, he was kicked off to his death. Of course, she ends up dying eventually, too...
  • The scene of people panicking, tripping, throwing chairs, and getting whacked in the head by girders in the disco is meant to be frantic and panicky, but comes off as unintentionally amusing. The last one, in particular, seems as if the ship said, "Screw you!" and smacked the guy on purpose.
  • The Captain and Fergie randomly embrace before the ballroom finally floods. It was never established that the two knew each other beyond him just hiring her for the singing job, so it just comes off as comical.
• Retroactive Recognition: Who knew that Captain Holt was a different kind of Captain before joining the 99th Precinct?
• Signature Scene:
  • The Poseidon capsizing for its Disaster Porn visual spectacle. It's no surprise that the clip for it on Youtube has at least 27 million views, which is far more views than any other clip of the film.
  • The elevator scene due to how tragic Valentin's death is.
• So Okay, It's Average: Most reviews seem to agree that while the story and characters are mediocre at best, the film's visual effects and action sequences are great.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Maggie, Dylan and Robert become this in regards to the elevator scene that leads to Valentin's death. Maggie decides to not help Dylan and Robert who are trying to pull Richard and Valentin up to safety as she is too busy comforting her son Connor. This is despite the fact that two people's lives are at risk and that she'd have plenty of time to comfort her son afterwards. Dylan and Robert don't even bother to ask Maggie to help them even though having a third person helping would've probably saved both Richard and Valentin nor do they ask Valentin to climb Richard as doing so would've saved his life and would've provided them an extra hand to save Richard. Instead, they almost immediately tell a reluctant and apologetic Richard to kick Valentin down to his death. Even worse is that all of them completely forget about Valentin afterwards despite the fact that he was their guide to navigating the ship. Granted, they're focused in trying to survive a life and death situation. Richard is the only one who avoids this, if only for the fact that it wasn't his idea to go first, was reluctant and apologetic about kicking off Valentin and shows remorse over doing so (if for about some seconds at least).
  • On top of that, Dylan idiotically allowed Elena to be the last person to swim through the flooded corridors, even when he explicitly made it a point not to do this earlier in the vents due to her claustrophobia. Unsurprisingly, she ends up dying.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The capsizing sequence is unquestionably the highlight of the film, but the Poseidon itself is amazing, as all the exterior shots of the ship itself are 100% CGI, and was listed in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records as the most detailed CGI model ever to appear in a movie. And the opening shot? The only real element is Josh Lucas running around on the decks.
• The Woobie: Everyone, but special mention goes to poor Valentin.

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