What's Going On?

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 2002)

I feel compelled to be the 900th or so person who's probably commenting on this movie. Right now, this movie is about as popular as the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was in 1981, and to this I say: Hogwash. No one seemed to mind in 1997, when people were lining up to see this movie three or four times. Now the same people are trashing it. Urgh. But it doesn't surprise me. When it comes to movies, we tend to get brainwashed by other movielovers and critics, and if they imply "we made a mistake--this movie is really awful," we tend to believe it. I watched Titanic in its entirety again the other day and I must go against the current grain and say that it is a great movie (or should I say, still a great movie). People who have not seen this movie on a large screen cannot say that they've seen this movie. Period. So go away. I will agree with most and say that the acting is pretty bad (and the movie did not pick up any Oscars in the acting category). James Cameron may be an arrogant jerk. And the screenplay is corny. But the sheer awesomeness of the film is what I remembered when I saw it on the big screen in 1997. Cameron, despite his personal faults, took us on that doomed luxury liner, literally transporting us back to 1912. Yes, it could be argued that movies like "A Night to Remember" were better examinations of Titanic's final hours, and IMAX productions like Titanica had better footage of the ship at the bottom of the Atlantic. But Cameron's "kitchen sink" approach to telling the story, which includes a trite but still rather sweet fictional love story,
is what captivated audiences in 1997. Give this movie twenty years. People will rediscover its magic after the predictable backlash has worn off. Hey, even Alice Cooper is admitting today that Saturday Night Fever is a great album.