Grandpa and the Great Movie Debacle

Last night Brad and I watched "The Poseidon Adventure" with Grandpa. Now, I heartily do NOT recommend this movie. Firstly, it was made in the seventies, and therefore highly weird and cheesy and generally suspect in many ways. For those of you who know and love Mystery Science Theater, it was kind of that genre. Strike two: it has Gene Hackman in it, who never fails to creep me out. And then there were several more things that struck me as "EWWwww" so, suffice it to say, just because I am mentioning the fact that I watched it, please don't go out and try it yourself at home. It would just be a waste of your time. Basically, we watched it to spend time with Grandpa.

Having said all that, there was an element of enjoyable suspense to the tale. Because I know that those of you who have never seen it will probably not go out and get it after reading this, I feel somewhat at liberty to divulge some key plot points. The "Poseidon" is a cruise ship which, on her last voyage before retirement, meets a huge tsunami type wave which turns her upside down. A small group of people from the dining room decide to climb "up" to the bottom of the ship to see if they can get out somehow, instead of waiting below for help to come to them. They encounter many scary obstacles and difficulties, not to mention the fact that the ocean is in hot pursuit, flooding each deck, just as they are leaving it. There is much wild eyed terror and biting of knuckles.

Well, I had never seen this movie before, and in spite of its general weirditude, I was still a tad bit anxious to make sure they all got out and were freed from a watery grave. I often wondered how they would do it. Brad and Grandpa had seen it. Now, Brad is usually pretty good about not giving things away. Grandpa, on the other hand, is a first class spoiler!

There was this one scene where they had to swim underwater to get to the next safe place. Gene Hackman was the first one down, and got trapped somehow. So this older woman came to his rescue. She had to hold her breath for like a minute, and she reached the other side safely. But even before she got into the water, I knew she was going to eventually die from the strain of it...because Grandpa told me. " Yes, she makes it to the other side, but I guess her heart gives out on her." Ahhh. So glad to know ahead of time. And sure enough, shortly after she got out of the water, she collapsed and died. But then Grandpa was making noises about her husband, and how he was in for a similar fate. It must have been a while since he had watched this movie, because the old husband MADE IT to the END! He was rescued! I was so confused.

Good thing Grandpa never watched movies with Bibleschool students in the Rec Room. I don't know how he would have fared. People would have gotten so mad at him for giving away the ending.

In conclusion, I never want to go on a cruise in my LIFE. I can't hold my breath for more than like fifteen seconds and I stink at swimming. If I had been on the Poseidon, I probably would have been among the first to give up and die.