Maiden Voyage

MAIDEN VOYAGE: OCEAN HIJACK is a fun B-movie riff on Steven Seagal's UNDER SIEGE, substituting the Aikido-fighting star for B-movie regular Casper Van Dien (STARSHIP TROOPERS). Van Dien and his buddies (including a rather unbelievable kung fu fighting female head of security) are trapped on a luxury cruise liner when it's hijacked by terrorists, and they must do their utmost to regain control of the vessel and save the lives of the passengers.

Being a TV movie, I wasn't expecting much from this one, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got. MAIDEN VOYAGE certainly packs in the action throughout, and there's so much of it that you can forgive the poor production values and the lack of technical expertise apparent in the movie's poor continuity, editing, and special effects.

Almost half of the movie seems to consist of Van Dien beating up various henchmen or running away from them. All of the usual DIE HARD clichés are in place, but what most surprised me was how violent this film is for a TV movie, with plenty of bloody squib hits peppering the production. It's certainly no classic, but it's often unintentionally funny and it never fails to entertain. I had a ball with it.

I saw this on TV the other night… or rather I flicked over to another channel every so often to watch infomercials when I couldn't stand watching it any longer. It was bad. Really, really bad. Not "so bad it's good" just flat out bad. How did it get funded? Who thought this was a good idea? An actor friend of mine auditioned and was told he wasn't good enough to play a bad guy but I think what they meant was "save yourself and runaway from this steaming pile of @#$%." I bet the rest of the cast had been given the option. To be fair the acting was hard to judge because of the appalling fake American ascents. The shooting was dullllllllllll. The action was awkward and stilted. The dialog was inane. By far the saddest thing was ship. In real life the Interislander ferry is a shabby boat and on film it doesn't scrub up well. Instead of trying very unsuccessfully to make it look like a new crews liner with bits of tinsel wrapped around rusting polls, I kid you not, they could have change the script to explain or even celebrate the shabbiness. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb. Don't watch this movie, not even as a joke.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but some films are good and some films are bad. Of course, there are extremes within those two broad categories. Films such as The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, and Star Wars slot comfortably into the good category. At the other end of the spectrum there are those films that simply don't deserve to be mentioned by name. Occasionally however, someone produces a truly woeful film. A film that should be singled out as a demonstration of how awful a film can be. A film that is more than bad. Such a film is Maiden Voyage.

Briefly, Maiden Voyage is a story about a luxury cruise ship that is hijacked by a gang of evil criminals who demand a ransom from an equally evil, scheming ship's owner. Of course, there is an all American hero on board, complete with chiselled jaw and sculptured chest, who saves the day.

This is a production that plumbs new depths. Everything about it is bad. The acting, the direction and the so-called plot are breath-takingly poor. In short, it is an insult to the intelligence of any unfortunate viewer. Even an American viewer would be annoyed by its shortcomings.

Yes, it's that bad.

I will resist the temptation to compose a list of things that angered me about this film. However, its dumber-than-dumb conclusion should serve as an adequate example of what I mean.

Imagine in your mind that you are an evil hijacker and you are stood in an open lifeboat on a calm sea. You are in company with the hero who holds a ticking bomb. Said hero throws the bomb to you and dives overboard. What would you do? I don't know about you, but I would throw the bomb as far as I possibly could into the sea. Not this guy. He watches as our hero swims away and then he tries to disarm the bomb with unfortunate (for him) results. Enough said. Such a demise would merit a mention in the Darwin Awards website and might also be a suitably apt conclusion to the production team's lives.

I caught this film late on a sat night/ Sunday morning with my brother. We had been drinking. This is one of the best films for ripping apart I have ever seen. From the 'luxury' ocean liner actually being a 'roll on, roll off' ferry, complete with cast iron everything to the doors with adhesive stickers saying staff, then seeing the same door being used for something else in another scene - this film rocks!! The continuity is so poor you cant help but notice it, it slaps you in the face with the holes. In the final scene he jumps off a life boat with the ferry in the distance. Cut to his son and new girlfriend (The ships PR director who knows kung-fu and used to be in the police but was dismissed for doing things her way - true)on the ferry going very fast away from the explosion. ......Then the dad is there hugging them. HoW???? Who cares, its magic. There is not one redeeming feature to this film. The casino is the size of a large bedroom with one casino table. when being chased by the villains there is only One place to hide, you've guessed it. Enter the villains who, instead of checking under the One table, proceed to shoot up four fruit machines and a little corner bar (a corner bar in the casino - fantastic). They walk straight past the only hiding place thus allowing our Casper to get around them and 'take them out'.

Get some mates over, get a few drinks in, put this film on and howl.

The boat stayed afloat - but the movie sank. I feared the worst when I saw the opening credits... It probably is as awful as the others have said, but it was VERY late at night and I watched on TV as I lay comfortably in bed - the best thing I could find at the time! (Which tells you how appalling the competition must have been)Yes it creaked, was as weak as all get-out but it filled the time and I smiled at some of the dreadful moments of which there was no shortage. When luxury cruise liners operating out of the States are virtual cities with every luxury on board, I did wonder throughout why anybody would pay good money to go on this rusting old tub! Not a decent surface in sight! The "lounge" was so tiny it was ludicrous. It made twelve people "a crowd". It must be the world's only cruise liner without a swimming pool. The aerial shots revealed it to be a stumpy, ugly old vessel looking suspiciously like a superannuated ferry. (And as is pointed out above -it apparently WAS.) Fortunately I'm not THAT familiar with Kiwiland to have recognised any landmarks so I was spared that pain. It seems the NZ taxpayers there didn't get away so painlessly. It was so bad it was good! Casper van den Bierg is decorative. I'd never seen him before! He really must have NEEDED the work.