A new entry in Netflix’s Trainwreck series of documentaries must have been a difficult one to hold in: Trainwreck: Poop Cruise takes a 55-minute look back at an infamous Carnival cruise ship disaster from early 2013, when thousands of passengers were stranded at sea for days in a largely electricity-free vessel. Tensions ran high, as did the levels of waste-water that seeped onto the boat as toilets failed to flush and passengers failed to poop into provided biohazard bags as requested.
If that sounds like a situation you’d like to learn more about (and it must be for some subscribers, as the movie is currently charting #1 across the whole service) Netflix has your back. The streamer is angling to be your number one source for chronicles of high-profile failures – and also, in this case, your number two.
These Trainwreck documentaries tend to be irresistible in subject matter and slightly malnourished in terms of insight; they’re a cross between cultural-anthropology deep-dive and a VH1 I Love the ‘90s segment. To that end, Poop Cruise includes first-hand accounts, some video footage from the actual cruise (as well as some that’s a bit more ambiguous as to whether it’s actually from this one), a few re-enactments, and plenty of archive footage There’s also a brief and startling reminder that SNL used to do cold-open sketches that didn’t feature political impressions.
Image: Netflix
Poop Cruise director James Ross selects a few passengers and crew members to take us through the descent into the bowels of cruise hell. This includes a trio of ladies who were there for a bachelorette party; a father and daughter on a bonding trip; and a guy vacationing with his girlfriend’s family, hoping to make a good impression on his potential future father-in-law. Multiple crew members are able to offer a bit more behind-the-scenes information. The passengers, though, carry the heaviest narrative load, and their main job seems to be imparting an absolute refusal to poop into a plastic bag as instructed. These instructions are reasonably presented as the best solution to a terrible situation, and one guy spends the vast majority of his segment saying that he would not do that under any circumstances, as if he had been asked to select other passengers to be cooked and eaten, rather than relieve himself in less-than-ideal circumstances.
He clearly isn’t alone in this sentiment; footage shows plenty of people searching for rumored working bathrooms. Apparently, he did actually find one, though he mentions that conveying this information to his potential in-laws was an “awkward” conversation.
At this point, Poop Cruise takes on another, perhaps unconscious topic: Are all these people terribly constipated, metaphorically as well as physically? Is it weird to think, you know, telling your girlfriend’s parents the location of a working bathroom actually isn’t that uncomfortable? Neither, for that matter, should it be to use a bag instead of a toilet, if it keeps the pipes from overflowing.
The mother of the then-young girl, on the cruise for some daddy-daughter time, tearfully recalls wondering if she would see her daughter alive again. While it’s hard not to sympathize with any parent fearful over their child’s safety, the documentary doesn’t exactly make a case for the life-threatening nature of the cruise by describing the situation as very, very gross and uncomfortable. If there was any genuine sickness ripping through the boat (which is, to be clear, very much a risk on cruises!), the doc doesn’t get into it.
Image: Netflix
But the passenger and crew accounts do describe some behavior that might make the passengers of the Titanic feel that, in retrospect, they conducted themselves with utmost dignity: Food-hoarding, weird tribalism, fights, public nudity, and, what’s worse, not a single humble steerage passenger falling in love with a soulful rich girl and changing her life in the process!
That’s not to say that the passengers in question are the ones responsible for this debacle (though a Russian-born crew member does gleefully point out the Americans’ inability to cope with the inconvenience of waiting in long lines for food). Carnival bears the brunt of the doc’s mild ire when it’s revealed that cruise-ticket language essentially excused the company from providing anything at all, from a seaworthy vessel to edible food to basic safety. Poop Cruise reveals that after a series of lawsuit settlements, Carnival has removed those clauses from future tickets.
But it wasn’t too long ago that New York magazine was reporting on another form of absolute hell that can await ill-fated cruise passengers. This is clearly an industry that takes advantage of economic anxiety and a desire for American luxury to corner vacationers into situations that can go wrong much more easily than anyone admits. By simultaneously marketing these 55 minutes as both an entertaining trainwreck and an unimaginable hardship, this mini-movie is essentially talking out of both sides of its mouth.
If there was a chance for Poop Cruise to dig further into the compulsive muchness that causes a segment of the population to lose their minds with ecstasy over an all-inclusive buffet and an invitation to binge-drink, the documentary does what it subjects couldn’t, and hastily flushes the worst stuff away.
Trainwreck: Poop Cruise is now streaming on Netflix.