It could have been a masterpiece

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2006)

This movie was loved and then it was loved to be hated.
Personally, it drives me crazy. It had amazing effects, a great secondary cast and extras and the sinking scene is one of the most stomach wrenching things I have ever seen in a movie.
But James Cameron CANNOT write dialog. Unless it was already based on something that happened in reality it was awful. And it wasn't DiCaprio or Winslet's faults as they aren't bad when they're not talking and they have been great in other things.
Not to mention, yes you can certainly watch a documentary if you want the true story of the Titanic, but that doesn't change one simple fact. The real story is more interesting than a stilted generic love story.
So many things not included in the movie... Charles Lightoller and twenty other men standing on an overturned life-boat for hours in freezing water is somehow less interesting than Cal Hockley the most generic villain I have seen on screen in a long time.
So why do I bother watching? Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews is heart-breaking and probably the best thing in the movie. I also love the man who plays Wallace Hartley, the entire "Nearer My God to Thee" scene is fantastic.
Or when Winslet and DeCaprio finally shut up, they have a good scene or two. When Rose is being lowered in a lifeboat and looking up at Jack, and when Rose and some minor characters exchange these amazing little looks as they wait on the stern for the ship to go down.
There is some great eye-acting in this movie. Victor Garber, the man playing William Murdoch. The priest in the sinking scene as praying people grab his hands. Most of the extras and the people in the life-boats.
But Jmes Cameron's dull fiction and dreadful dialog kills the movie. It's a lot shorter the way I watch it, a lot gets fast forwared. But I keep watching because when the movie is great, it's great.
It would have been a masterpiece if Cameron had stuck to reality. Not because it was reality, but because it was a thousand times more interesting than a stilted love story.
A better writer than Camron would be hard pressed to write fiction more interesting than the reality of that night.
"A Night to Remember" is much, much, better but "Titanic" is a good-ish could have been amazing movie that I can't help but go back to for its quality elements.