Decent, but overrated.

Rating: 7/10 (13 March 2017)

When I say that Titanic is overrated, I do not mean that it is bad. Did it deserve to win Best Picture? Not in my eyes, particularly when Good Will Hunting was competing with it. But it was not a waste of a budget, which is more than you can say for most movies with massive budgets. I have a number of problems with the story, but it was decent and it seems like James Cameron and company wanted to do a good job on it. Really, the idea behind this movie is rather praiseworthy. With the sinking of the Titanic being such a famous disaster event, having the story revolve around the exact happenings of that night would not really be that dramatic. On it's own the sinking is not that dramatic because we know it's going to happen, but now that we are invested in Jack and Rose's relationship, it has higher stakes and the question now becomes "will they be able to both survive this tragedy?"
I'll start with the things that I liked about the movie. Some of the early conversations with Jack and Rose were really good and created a tangible chemistry between the two of them. Whether you liked them as people or not, it is hard to refute that they care about each other sincerely. Jack sees the good in Rose rather than what she can do for him, and she is grateful to him for that. This is aided in no small part because the movie has an hour more than the average runtime to develop their relationship, but at least the extra time was put to good use. Secondly, I liked that attention was given to the ship's crew and officers. The officers and other employees were having to react to a totally unexpected crisis and have to make sacrifices and difficult decisions. In particular, I sympathized with the guilt of the officer who comes back and saves Rose. Lastly, the movie was very visually nice. The computer graphics and such were good, but not so good that they made things look unrealistic.
On the downside, there were a few shots that seemed like an egregious waste of money. The huge sweeping pans of the ship and the shots of all the propellers and cogs moving were really not necessary and just seemed to be taking unnecessary advantage of the allotted budget. The grand scale of the sinking was okay because it was called for, but there was really no reason for such spectacle before-hand. The main issue I had was Rose. Now, if you love Titanic, skip the rest of this paragraph because I might make you not like it if you keep reading. Rose is effectively an American princess, which is not inherently a problem, but I found nothing to like about her. When Jack died, I didn't really care how it made her feel because she just didn't feel like a real person. Also, her conflict is not one that I think most people would identify with. She's trapped in her upper-class life, which makes perfect sense for someone living at that time, but I fail to see how that has relevance to anyone watching the movie in the '90's and beyond.
If you're older than about 12 or 13, you've most likely already seen Titanic. If not, it's worth a try. You might be disappointed by it because your parents and/or friends have made it out to be this huge deal. It is long and although it tries to keep a good pace, you may get bored at times. I found that things dragged near the end, but I would guess that most people will get bored in the first half of the movie. One final thing to be aware of: the characters are relatively two dimensional. Nearly all of them are flawed, but they are more caricatures than real people. Overall Rating: 7.2/10