Deep Rising (1998)

reviewed by
Jon Popick


PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

Welcome to January – the month of movie hell. One needs to only look back to past Januarys to see that studios dump crappy projects onto the unsuspecting audience faster than Kirstie Alley can pound tequila shooters. Fierce Creatures, Zeus & Roxanne, Turbulence, Bio-Dome, Eye for an Eye, The Relic , Bed Of Roses Bleah! Chalk Deep Rising up to the list of shame.

The way that I see it, if you're going to rip off another film, you might as well make it a good one. Deep Rising is a offensive combination of bad Anaconda and a worse Event Horizon. Its story is unimaginative and the acting is even worse. Treat Williams is making a late charge for the elusive `Worst Actor Of The Decade' title. Too bad, Keanu got such a big jump on him.

The story begins on the super-luxury liner `The Argonautica', where the rich dine and gamble until something knocks it all to hell. Then, we cut to a rag-tag bunch on a smaller boat. The leader is John Finnegan (Williams) and he and his hapless crew are apparently chartering their boat to a group of missile-toting thugs. They break down and seek refuge on `The Argonautica'.

But, wait…the giant boat is empty, and thus the endless tirade of cliches and unoriginal situations begin. Finnegan even utters the line `I've got a really bad feeling about this…'. So do I, pal. So do I.

At one point, Finnegan rescues the stock female off of `The Argonautica' and leads her to his boat to make the big getaway and she utters `That heap of junk is your ship?'. Well tape some cinnamon buns to her head and call me a Wookie. Finnegan also pilfers the line `Now there's something you don't see everyday' from ConAir. And it's not even a great line.

There are a few good gory scenes and Finnegan's Shaggy-like sidekick provides adequate comic moments, but it still stinks. Director Stephen Sommers, whose previous credits include both Tom & Huck and The Adventures of Huck Finn, may or may not have been alive during production. He has been tagged to helm The Mummy from the Anne Rice novel. If she made such a big stink about Tom Cruise playing Lestat, she'll drop dead over this.


The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews