Titanic Details

Soggy mess

This is a truly horrible movie, designed to jerk the tear ducts into action and give the odious Leonardo di Caprio dangerous career oxygen.

People get on a big boat. Someone forgets to navigate. Boat hits iceberg. Gradually sinks, killing most on board. That’s the historical truth that the movie is based on – obviously a tragedy. The greater disaster though, is that Cameron decided to make a sloppy ‘love conquers all’ movie about it, AND spend over $200 million in the process.

Only Kathy Bates, as the ‘unsinkable’ (i.e. cake-scoffing) Molly Brown and Bernard Hill as Captain Birdseye escape with performances they could justifiably call adequate. Leonardo wails and gnashes and is completely ineffective; in fact the only thing less effective is Billy Zane’s shooting – didn’t we all desperately want him to get Leo between the eyes a couple of times? Kate Winslet, whose career has only recovered this year with the incredible Eternal Sunshine, wobbles around the embarrassingly fake set looking like she’s about to breastfeed Leo and then selfishly lets him freeze to death so she can keep the big blue rock, and doesn’t have to pawn it to spend on baby formula.

This is about as unpleasant as movies get, and Cameron hasn’t made one since. Lets all make sure he doesn’t get near a linen-back chair ever again.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Watch it for the SFX

The first two hours are junk - cod oirish accents, poor but noble cliches abound, an upper class young woman running about the ship chasing men and having extra marital sex. Really, this would have been as unacceptable in those days as walking naked down the street is today (women were still sent to mental asylums for getting pregnant outside marriage until the 50s) The film gets interesting when the ship starts to sink. But I wouldn't watch it twice.