Boy Meets Girl, Ship Meets Ice, Movie Founders in Banality

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2002)

Evidently the reputation of this blockbuster continues to nosedive, like the ship, and like DiCaprio's standing as he loses his teenybopper following. He has failed to grow out of his chrysalis (will he ever? Tom Cruise is pushing 40 and still coming on like a 20 year old). I feel the movie sets up quite an intriguing fictional frame quite skilfully in the first 20-odd minutes- not unlike 'King Kong'- and then blows it the moment Rose's mother utters the words we're all praying not to hear: "They say she's unsinkable". More's the pity, this comes just after the amusing tease of not showing Rose as she alights from the cab until we've peered under her big Edwardian hat.
From then on, dialogue cliches, anachronisms, falsifications of historical fact, national stereotypes and the absurdities and contrivances of the plot pile up until the film's credibility is foundering long before the vessel does. Why do the lovers make out in a car (is this a first?) when she could have smuggled him into her stateroom with its four-poster bed? Note too how in between their 1990s-style bursts of nookie the star-crossed pair manage to be on hand for every plot development. It's Rose who quizzes an admiring Andrews about the lifeboats' capacity, and she and Jack are snogging at the very moment of impact- which is far more juddery than in reality, since few passengers noticed it. Somehow Rose wades through freezing water for minutes on end, clad in her filmy dress, without taking any harm: I know Dame Winslet's naturally well insulated, but not even a sneeze?
It's beyond a joke when Murdoch, a gallant officer, is smeared as a corrupt suicide: Cameron had to pay $8,000 to charity to make up for that bit of hokum. But many of the errors are venial, and some grisly enjoyment can be drawn from the spectacle of multiple death, just as a little can be had from the curiously cursory contemplation of the ship's luxurious appointments in the earlier scenes, which experts have warranted authentic.
On the whole, though, sitting through these three hours feels like being forced to drink an enormous, sickly cocktail. For relief, try the pure draught of iceberg-cold water provided by the British antidote: Eric Ambler's and Roy Ward Baker's 'A Night to Remember', which sticks to documentary reconstruction and distils more pity, terror and catharsis than Mr Cameron's $200m budget and tin ear could begin to generate.
PS: When people rave about 'Titanic's' box office- as if numbers guaranteed quality- tell them that inflated 1997 ticket prices are responsible for most of it. Tickets sold ('bums on seats') for the great popular epics of the past, such as 'Gone with the Wind', were far more numerous.