Great effects, but not enough to save Titanic from mediocrity.

Rating: 1/10 (25 June 2002)

By now everyone has seen this film, so there's no need to give details. You've heard all the pre-teen girls and middle-aged housewives rave about it. Now, here are thoughts on this film from a male. I don't have a vendetta against this film. Except being dragged to it twice and being forced to see it again on video. Oh, the humanity. OK, maybe I do have a small vendetta.
Titanic is visually impressive. SFX are impressive as well. It's really sort of neat to see the whole incident re-created on film.
As for the story, Titanic is at the same time a self-important and impossibly simplistic film. Characterization in Titanic seems to be done with a very large club; the dialogue in the same fashion. Don't expect any subtleties here. What you hear from the characters is exactly what is going on. It's pretty much a paint-by-number love/tragedy, and unless you're especially sappy, the dialogue is likely to range from flat and predictable to downright appalling. It reminded me of watching a couple at a junior high dance call each other "pooky" or something.
The old woman at the start and finish of the film is a bunch of boring nonsense. Why waste the viewers' time seeing the heroine as an elderly invalid? No one came to the theatre to see that. They could have at least made her accent match Winslet's.
You know the drill, the princess falls in love with the pauper. I'm not totally opposed to the romance picture if it's done well, but this one simply is not. They call each other by name in every sentence. Very annoying. A romance film is only as good as the dialogue and the scenes where you see it all come together. Sorry, but teaching a girl to spit before having her pose nude for pictures isn't really my idea of romance.
It's also very clear what Cameron wants you to think. Except for Jack and Rose, every poor person has a heart of gold, and every rich person on the boat is evil and deserves to be, well, drowned like a rat. The passengers are stereotyped so badly the "rich people being snobs" scenes will likely leave you rolling your eyes. OK, they are bad rich people, and poor people are basically good. We GET it already.
I find it puzzling that so much time was obviously spent on the effects, (which were, to be fair, excellent) and yet we get such a basic script that this basically becomes a thinly-disguised, well-targeted effects movie. Effects are great, but can't salvage a poor, eccentric script and below-average performances from its actors.
Not much was made about the length of this picture, but I found it to be excruciating. It boggles the mind how Cameron could write the most simplistic script ever, and stretch it out to be so long that you start hoping the !@* damn !@(&$& boat would just sink already!
Ahem.
Cameron is great - at directing a visual picture. But don't expect him to write a masterpiece. Effects are great, but this film is far, far too long for a script with all the complexity of a coloring book. Visually stunning, Titanic is; no doubt about that. But when it comes to substance, Titanic is all wet.