Wolfgang Petersen’s war film Das Boot is not just one of the best war movies ever made, it’s also the best submarine movie ever, and is so gripping and emotionally devastating that I cannot rewatch it very often.

So it’s all the more painful to see Petersen’s descent into the maelstrom of mediocrity that is Poseidon.

A remake of the 1977 disaster epic (and based on Paul Gallico’s novel), Poseidon follows the same setup as its predecessor. An absurdly luxurious cruise ship is capsized by a rogue wave, and a motley crew of survivors decide to escape by climbing to the bottom of the capsized ship.

I’m fairly certain that most of the survivors had names, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them. So we watch Obvious Hero (Kurt Russell), Stealth Hero (Josh Lucas) lead the way accompanied by Obvious Hero’s daughter Dewy-Eyed Maiden, her 100% personality-free boyfriend/fiancée Whatsisface, as well as a Sad Gay Man (Richard Dreyfuss), Screechy Single Mom, Single Mom’s Spawn, a Token Latina, a Doomed Busboy, and Leisure Suit Larry. I’m not being facetious – those descriptions sum up everything we learn about the characters, most of this served up in unwieldy chunks of expository dialogue.

This is the fatal flaw of Poseidon – we don’t look to a disaster movie for in-depth character study, but without characters to be interested in or care about, there’s no reason to see this movie as anything but an exercise in stunt work and CGI. It’s clear that the movie was severely edited to remove nearly everything but the setup and the action set pieces. For example, unless you’re looking at the bottom of the screen when Sad Gay Man sees the rogue wave approaching, you don’t realize that he’s been ready to jump overboard in a suicide bid (talk about being careful about what you wish for!). Similarly, in between set pieces a character will drop a bit of dialogue about themselves but these incidents are so brief and unconnected that the result is awkward and confusing rather than enlightening. The rest of the dialogue is variations on “The water’s rising!” “This is the only way out!” “I won’t leave you!” “A-A-A-G-LUG-G-G-G-G!” and the ever-popular “Nooooo!”

The special effects are impressive, and have come a long way since the original film. The capsizing is very well realized, but strangely uninvolving. Everyone remembers the unlucky bastard who fell into the stained-glass ceiling in the original film; there’s no such iconic image in this remake.

The movie progresses from set piece to set piece, and for the most part ends up being as involving as watching a video game. Watching the cast slog through water and dodge debris, you don’t worry about the characters so much as you feel sorry for the actors. This even holds true for the movie’s one harrowing sequence, a brutally realistic drowning that’s almost physically painful to watch. Its power comes not from the character’s fate as the realization of what the actor went through for the sequence (whatever he was paid for this movie, it wasn’t enough).

It’s all capped off by a Deus ex Machina-heavy ending that had me rolling my eyes. The only surprise was that one of the dead characters didn’t miraculously pop up alive at the end. (“How did you survive being underwater for so long?” “Wasn’t easy!”)

The extras are, like the movie itself, nothing remarkable. Trailers and a standard-issue making-of feature heavy on the “This has been an amazing experience!” and “I just loved working with [insert name here]”. Yawn-inducing at best.