Skip It

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2003)

Romance movies are not my genre. There I said it, now all you teenage girls (or ex-teenage girls I should probably say) can come with torches to my house and protest. That said, I think this movie is not only a dud on the technical level, but also on the content plateu.
James Cameron loves creating megadose action flicks (Terminator 2, True Lies, etc.) that usually require little background or very uninvolving plots. The guy has little to no screenwriting ability (if you read his scripts, particularly for ALIENS, you will see that there is nothing to applaud. Fortunately, as a director, Cameron can transcend the difficulties of putting images on paper and creating some impressive images (even if the scenes themselves are rather dull).
By all means, ABYSS and Terminator 2 deserved Oscars for Cinematography, but this movie is merely overrated end-of-the-year garbage (see also CHICAGO) that lacks emotion and style in his camerawork. Much of his work here in Titanic seems more like he's stealing ideas from Brian DePalma rather than being inventive.
Cameron learned from Corman, plain and simple, and that similar attitude is displayed here. Grabbing a cast from a fashion catalogue, Cameron proves (once again) that he hasn't lost his touch in how to be EXPLOITIVE of human emotion. That might explain his love life problems.
On the rest of the technical notes, this movie did NOT deserve most of the awards it was nominated for. The Sound is on par with T2 (read: awful) and the effects were unenlightening. Someone want to explain how Face/Off didn't get that award? The visual and SFX were fair. Fair to poor that is, Cameron has lost his ability to know when to use CGI and when not to. Film editing= totally awful, this was waaayy to long even for me. Hence I fell asleep three times during the sinking.
Music= James Horner's score is nothing new. It rather reminded me of "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur". If I had a time machine, I would've given him the Oscar for ALIENS instead. And as for the Director, what a joke. Now Cameron has become a recluse crackhead rather than therecluse genius he was.
So do the math, I have succeeded in knocking off 7 Oscars from this overrated POS. Now it's on par with Forrest Gump where it belongs. Overall: 1.5 out of 5. Don't waste your time.