Suprisingly a guilty pleasure of mine

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 1999)

I will admit that I did enjoy this movie; to a certain extent. It deserved the many things that it got. And some it did not deserve. The 11 oscars, all I can say is "Congratulations Mr. Cameron, you are a genius." The box office smash, good for you Titanic. But the repititious, boring and old hype for this movie went way too far. It wasn't as good as it was made out to be. For one, the whole teenybopper/Leonardo DiCaprio love craze lasted way too long. It was not an abnormal thing, one of those passing phases but was the sole of the HUGE amount of money it made.I will admit that I did enjoy this movie; to a certain extent. It deserved the many things that it got. And some it did not deserve. The 11 oscars, all I can say is "Congratulations Mr. Cameron, you are a genius." The box office smash, good for you Titanic. But the repititious, boring and old hype for this movie went way too far. It wasn't as good as it was made out to be. For one, the whole teenybopper/Leonardo DiCaprio love craze lasted way too long. It was not an abnormal thing, one of those passing phases but was the sole of the HUGE amount of money it made.
Now I saw this almost first in theaters, the weekend it came out. I saw it twice in theaters and maybe two or three times on video (which I own). I hadn't read any reviews for it, I loved it and cried. It had its share of flaws. A rather large share at that. The critics don't pick up on these sort of things. One thing I did not understand: How Kate Winslet picked up an Oscar nomination and Leonardo DiCaprio did not. Now I am not especially a fan of Mr. DiCaprio, I leave that to the girls. But he did just as good of a job as Ms. Winslet, if not better. The performances in the film were marvelous and spectacular, and Mr. DiCaprio's was exceptional.

This movie had too much of certain elements and too less of others. Of course everyone knows how the background story ends. The ship hits an iceberg and sinks. That is not a spoiler. Anyone living in North America and Europe should know at least an ample about of information about it. But the emotional, side-story about the love affair between a first-class, rich girl with everything and a low-class, poor guy with nothing. And of course what would a movie be without a bad guy. A "villain" of some sort. Billy Zane gives a great performance in this role, as usual. The kind of guy you love to hate and hate to love. But you always figure out a way to do both. Through the film you get to like Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet) a lot more as their love affair continues. Through the first tape, it builds to the climaxes...let's just leave it to the famous car scene and the more famous drawing scene. The second tape, or the second half, things start to go downhill. The excitement is more "blah" and the suspense is still there but is predictable and gets quite silly and sappy. The dialouge towards the end is very silly and sounds very rehearsed.
The movie would have been a lot better if it focused more on the ship itself, the iceberg, etc. and less on the emotional story. "Titanic" is an inappropriate title in this movie. This situation could have happened on an airplane, be given the name "Southwest Airlines" and wouldn't have been half good.
Well my point is, I enjoyed this movie. It was great. Not excellent, but a great movie. Definitely will go down in history books, but not in mine. Not on my top ten, top twenty, maybe the top fifty. ****1/2 out of *****