Two ways to look at it

Rating: 1/10 (21 April 2003)

Titanic (1997) appears to be one of those movies that you can either love or hate. Personally, I'm in the latter crowd. But I have my reasons.
There's no doubt that James Cameron spared no expense with sets, models and the like. Unfortunately, it was ruined by the two "stars" (Winslet and DiCaprio) and their Forbidden Romance. First of all, it's just plain not realistic. My family worked on White Star Liners (and later Cunard) for years, on both sides of 1912, and the romance just plain wouldn't have happened. Nor would it have been allowed to continue. And they certainly wouldn't have allowed DiCaprio to get on the ship.
Whether you like the romance, the emotion, the love, whatever, this is basically another example of Hollywood exploiting a tragedy to make a glitzy, sugary, appeals-to-the-masses movie out of it. This could have been an excellent remake of A Night To Remember (1958) (not that it needed remaking) what with all the great sets and special effects, but instead the failed. It's just like what they did with Pearl Harbor (2001), which was poor version of Tora Tora Tora (1970). I think Hollywood has learned their lesson by now. But if you want cheesy, not terribly believeable romance set against the backdrop of some of our century's worst tragedies, go see Titanic (1997) and Pearl Harbor (2001). If you want to see well-executed movies about these tragic events, see Night To Remember, A (1958) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)