Not exactly worthy of all the hype upon its release in 1997, but passable

Rating: 7/10 (16 February 2009)

As I'm sure you know, this was a HUGE hit back when it was in theatres, turning out to be the highest grossing movie of all time, but as hard as it may be to believe, I've finally seen it for the first time, over eleven years later! I was eleven years old while the film was enjoying its box office success, and yes, I did hear a lot about the movie and how massive it was. I was also soon familiar with the famous song, "My Heart Will Go On", performed by the greatly despised Celine Dion. Still, I never actually saw the movie for over a decade. Shortly before finally watching it, I knew that despite its popularity, it has also been widely ridiculed. So, it wouldn't have surprised me if I wasn't very impressed at all, but that didn't exactly turn out to be the case.
84 years after the sinking of the Titanic, a group of treasure hunters discover a drawing of a naked woman from the ship's wreckage. A TV report catches the attention of a woman around 101 years old named Rose Calvert, who contacts the treasure hunters to tell them that she is the one in that picture! She then goes with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, to visit the team. Although they are skeptical, the very elderly woman begins to tell them about her experience back in 1912, when she was Rose DeWitt Bukater, a rich teenager aboard the Titanic, believed to have gone down with the ship! She tells them how she began an unlikely romantic relationship with a poor young man on board named Jack Dawson after he saved her from a suicide attempt, and how this led to conflict between Rose and her family and oafish fiancée Caledon Hockley.
Several months ago, I watched "Pearl Harbour", and it seemed that some people compared that film to "Titanic", which I thought was not good. As a result, I was expecting the same kind of poor dialogue and romance in this movie, the first of the two. Well, I definitely did find some fairly weak dialogue, and there definitely are flaws in the romance, so the film does have those things in common with its successor, but fortunately to a lesser degree. At least none of it made me laugh here, though it certainly does take some points off. Some of the performances here are also weak, including some of the actors who played the treasure hunters in the 90's parts of the film. When the acting isn't poor, it's basically average, for the most part at least. Oh well, at least I actually cared about what happened to the two main characters, even if they weren't portrayed as well as they could have been. I watched this movie on VHS, and due to its length, it was split onto two tapes. To tell you the truth, I was definitely more impressed with the content on the second tape than the content on the first. Without the climax (which I saw on the second video tape), I would be giving this movie a rating no higher than 6/10, but even that part isn't perfect.
I know this is a widely loathed movie. I'm also no fan of the widely loathed Celine Dion, who performed the hit song for the film, and am not proud of the fact that she's from my country. (Mind you, I think "My Heart Will Go On" is the only song in her catalogue I've ever heard more than once, and I couldn't even name any of the others.) However, while it is severely flawed, and I wouldn't want to watch it multiple times, I think it could have been much worse. The climax is suspenseful, and before that, the film basically has some good and not so good moments. There may be some FAIRLY moving moments in this 1997 blockbuster, though nothing that even came close to having me in tears, unlike apparently many other viewers. It was also interesting for me seeing Gloria Stuart as 101-year-old Rose, since I had previously seen her in "The Invisible Man", which was made over sixty years before this film! Is this version of "Titanic" thoroughly inaccurate? I'm sure it is, so don't watch it if you want a realistic film based on historical fact. It's a fictional story about a romantic relationship between two fictional people. While it isn't worthy of its position as the highest grossing movie of all time, nor was it worthy of eleven Oscars, at least I think I can call it half-decent. I'm not sure what it would have been like watching this film without having seen "Pearl Harbour" first, but now that I've seen them both, I do think "Titanic" is pretty good in comparison.