Better than average movie, could have been great.

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 1998)

Let's get the negative out of the way... DiCaprio and Winselt are akin to a Boston Terrier and a Golden Retriever. They really needed a more masculine lead for the love story to be convincing (but then that would have cut into ticket sales for the 13-19 female demographic, right?) Anyway, one other thing that bothered me was unevenness of the dialogue. Winselt's dialogue seems to jump from Victorian to Gen X somewhere during the halfway point; the merging of 90's attitude with a pre-WWI setting bothered me in general (language, cursing, general attitude of some of the characters, etc.), not to mention the way Cameron manipulates the audience against Billy Zane's character, who really has done nothing wrong until he whips out a gun near the end (wouldn't *you* be mad if your fiance was carousing around with some strange guy days before your wedding? Me too). And what was the deal with "old Rose" throwing the diamond off the ship? That made absolutely no sense to me.
With all that said, the overriding message of the movie (which was summarized in Jack's speech at dinner) is a good one, the storytelling is well done for the most part, and the special effects are awesome (with the exception of one or two scenes)