Oh-oh: it's that sinking feeling

The Perfect Storm (12) General release

Start with a true story. Then take a boat which is not as well equipped as it ought to be. Populate the craft with diverse personalities, and sprinkle liberally with romantic and personal complications. Place the travellers and their craft in a potentially fatal situation far out to sea. Remember to have them ignore the warning signs they receive. Whip up hi-tech special effects as they venture deeper into danger. Top off with a brooding, swelling dramatic score composed by James Horner. Clean up at the box-office.

That recipe paid off handsomely for James Cameron's Titanic, and it's working all over again for Wolfgang Petersen's comparatively modest The Perfect Storm, on the evidence of its huge takings on release in the US.

Petersen's picture is based on the best-selling book by Sebastian Junger which speculated on the consequences after a Massachusetts fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, became embroiled in a raging storm in October 1991 when Hurricane Grace converged with another storm and with a cold front coming down from Canada.

The early sequences introduce the decent, hard-working fishermen who live in the port of Gloucester, Massachusetts and their families who anxiously await their safe return home from sea. George Clooney plays the skipper of the Andrea Gail, a lonely, divorced man who's missing his children and down on his luck. While his good friend (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) has returned with a large catch on her boat, he is unhappy with his haul, and with the season about to end he and his team of five are driven by economic necessity to go back out to sea. The team comprises a divorced young man (Mark Wahlberg) who has found new love with a local woman (Diane Lane), a lusty Jamaican (Allen Payne), a lovelorn type (Bob Gunton) who finally meets a woman the night before he sails, and two grumpy characters (William Fichtner and John C. Reilly) whose mutual antagonism is as implausibly established as it is resolved.

Director Petersen, who made the superior maritime drama Das Boot in his native Germany two decades ago, is more interested in the fate of these men rather than their individual characters, and no sooner are they established perfunctorily than Petersen tosses them around in their fragile vessel as the storm builds in ferocity. Meanwhile, weather information is provided by an excited TV meteorologist and by an old salt permanently propped up against the bar back in port.

Petersen's special effects team piles on the massive waves and raging winds, although the computerised effects do appear rather mechanical at times, and the frenetically tilting camerawork may well induce seasickness in the viewer. Despite the movie's concentration on the fate of the fishermen, much of the most gripping drama concerns the heroism of the daring air and sea rescue services who are anonymously personified.

- Michael Dwyer

Titan A.E. (PG) General release

As animators, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman have not been particularly noted for innovation in either style or narrative. The last film from the pair, Anastasia, despite being trumpeted as the first widescreen animated feature, was notable for its extreme conservatism, with its pastiche of Disney styles of the 1950s. It comes as a slight surprise, therefore, to see Bluth and Goldman targeting a part of the audience - pre-teen boys - which has tended to be less than impressed by the animated fare on offer from Disney and DreamWorks, preferring more "grown-up" action movies.

Titan A.E., with its digital effects, mildly alternative soundtrack and sci-fi setting, clearly sets out its stall for that audience as a movie that's closer in tone to Star Wars than to The Lion King. In fact, the debt to Star Wars is a little too obvious. The plot - rebellious teen discovers his roots and joins rebellion against an evil empire - is certainly too close for comfort. Also, the different styles of animation, from classical to computer-generated, jar against each other at times and the big-name voice cast (including Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, Janeane Garofalo and Nathan Lane) have a lot of anodyne dialogue to get through. However, this is still a passable enough entertainment, and some parents may find it fills a gap in their summer holiday schedules.

- Hugh Linehan

The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (PG) General release

It takes some chutzpah to make a sequel to a not-very-good original, without retaining any of your original cast, but that's what the holders of the Flintstones franchise have done with this prequel, with the same director (Brian Levant), but everything else changed. So Mark Addy, of Full Monty fame, takes over from John Goodman as Fred, while Stephen Baldwin replaces Rick Moranis as Barney Rubble, and two familiar TV faces - Kristen Johnston (Third Rock From the Sun) and Jane Krakowski (Ally McBeal) - step into the bearskin miniskirts of Elizabeth Perkins and Rosie O'Donnell, as Wilma and Betty. Most notably of all, Joan Collins assumes the role of Wilma's snobbish mother, played in the first movie by Elizabeth Taylor.

Apart from that, there's not much to distinguish Viva Rock Vegas from its predecessor - the same goofy production design, broad humour and bad puns are in place for this tale of how young Fred and Barney wooed their wives-to-be. Alan Cumming does an annoying turn as a camp extraterrestrial (don't ask), but otherwise the script is slightly sharper than the first movie, which isn't saying much.

- Hugh Linehan

Trick (Club) IFC, Dublin

Jim Fall's New York-set gay romantic comedy stars Christian Campbell as a young writer of stage musicals who feels he needs to experience more of life before he can depict it in his art. The opportunity presents itself when he meets a handsome young gogo dancer (John Paul Pitoc), but problems inevitably ensue. It's hard to care very much about what happens to anyone, though, in this rather tiresome little indie effort. Showing with Trick is Dream Kitchen, Barry Dignam's excellent eight-minute short about a teenage boy who is afraid of coming out.

- Hugh Linehan