Alright film, but over-rated

Rating: 3/10 (19 March 2005)

This may contain spoilers...... OK just a little bit of background to this review. Firstly, yes I was one of that 0.01% who did not see this movie at the cinemas when it came out. Secondly, when I did see it for the first time on TV last year, I missed the first 45 minutes. However, I saw enough of this movie to see how ridiculously over-rated it was. Firstly, the positives, and there weren't a whole lot. Number one: yes, the special effects were as good as they were supposed to be. The design of the Titanic was amazing. Also the bit at the end where the ship sinks was incredible. Number two: Kate Winslet has a nice body, and you do get to see a lot more of it than I thought you would...... although one could be a bit cynical about that scene, that they only put it in to get more people to watch it. That's about it for the positives. Now for the negatives: Leonardo Di Caprio can't really act. OK, I thought he did well in Romeo and Juliet (which is one of my favorite movies) but his acting and dialog are just really wooden in Titanic. The characters as a whole are just one-dimensional. One of the most laughable points was though how many life-or-death situations there are for Leo and Kate in the last hour (yes, the movie takes forever to finish). First Leonardo gets locked down below deck as the water level slowly rises (ooh will he survive????) and of course gets rescued by Kate Winslet after about 15 minutes. Then Kate's evil fiancée (yes not much room for development in that character) starts shooting at them so they have to run back 5 levels deep before deciding to go back on top. Here they face a literal "class barrier" (big metaphor there of course) a big iron gate, which, with help from the other battling workers, Leonardo bravely breaks down. Forgive my sarcasm, but it was hard not to roll my eyes throughout this whole sequence. Then after narrowly surviving half a dozen near-death experiences, Leonardo dies in the lamest way possible. Instead of attempting to find another piece of debris to float on in the water, he rather unnecessarily lets winslet have the whole piece of wood to float on, and lets himself freeze to death. But perhaps the worst part of all was the sequences where we go back to the old 101-year old version of Kate Winslet telling the story, with a bunch of young scientists passing social commentary on it. I've always hated this idea, because it gives away the ending of the film. The viewer knows that she will survive, and Leonardo won't. Which sort of takes away from any of the suspense. Anyhow, I would recommend this movie to anyone (not that you haven't seen it already) but go in with a low expectation and you might find it a decent film. Certainly don't watch it, though, expecting to see a film that deserved 11 Oscars, cos you will be disappointed.