Not great, but good

Rating: 7/10 (17 December 2001)

I just finished watching this on TV. It's easy to see why this movie was initially overhyped and overrated, then trashed as nothing more than a pre-teen chick flick. In truth, it's a lot like "Dances with Wolves", a big screen three hour plus epic that grabbed a fistful of Oscars, then p***ed everyone off by beating out what many thought was a superior film (for "Titanic" it was "LA Confidential", for "Wolves" it was "Goodfellas"). I don't know if it was Oscar material, but it was definitely better than the critics now claim. On the plus side, no expense was spared in getting every detail visually perfect. I don't know how he did it, but James Cameron managed to thoroughly convince his audience that it was the real Titanic we were seeing. And the sinking scenes were amazingly real, enough to grab the heart of the most jaded movie goer. On the minus side, far too much time was spent on the fictional romance between Jack and Rose. The story of the Titanic itself contains so much drama that wasting two hours on this love affair was simply not needed. In short, this could have been THE film of the 1990's, instead it ended up as a good, but not great, money-making blockbuster.