Glug...glug...glug...thunk.

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2004)

Just outside Kursk on a sunny July morning in 1943 Obersturmführer Muller of the 3rd Panzer Division has a problem. His fancy new Panther tank, in a Meisterstück of environmentally sound engineering, has come with a two live zebra painfully welded to the rear and, as we know, Germans don't do back wheel drive. Vorsprung Durk Technic.
A similar, and no less surreal, problem plagues James Cameron's technical tour de force. It is impressive, groundbreaking and sophisticated but, let's face it, it's going nowhere with a plot like that bolted incongruously to its chassis.
Renowned to be one of the most expensive films of all time; it seems preposterous that a few quid couldn't have been siphoned from the "huge-ship-sinks-dramatically" budget into the "story" budget. But there you go.
The actors try their best. Plaudits go Leonardo DiCaprio for successfully rehashing Hollywood's cheesy Iorish stereotypes. Billy Zane is excellent as the "creepy, violent one". And, of course, our Kate furthers the plot significantly by putting her famous waps on display (they are very impressive).
In fact the plot is so bad, and the dialogue so awful, you can sense the huge directorial sigh of relief when the ship starts to sink. Listen carefully and you can almost hear Cameron mutter over tortured screech of ice on metal, "Ah! This is the kinda film I understand." Once the ship goes belly-up things do, indeed, liven up dramatically. Things slide around, people scream, chandeliers crash, vast imponderable drops open beneath peoples' legs and the huge, hulking edifice that is James Cameron's Titanic sinks gracefully and inexorably into the dark waters.
At least an hour and forty minutes before all this, Winslet provides one of the more amusing, unintentional ironies of the film, when she declares to the ship's designer "Mr Freud has some interesting theories about men forever striving to make things bigger". Biggest ship, biggest movie, biggest budget. Hmmm, save it for Oprah.
So impressive, expensive, huge and groundbreaking. Nevertheless, Titanic remains a towering cathedral to mediocrity - and the only film for which the best viewing experience is achieved by arriving two-and-a-half hours late and leaving ten minutes before the end. 4/10.