Diminishing returns

Rating: 4/10 (10 April 1999)

I forget what prompted me to see Titanic for the first time -- I think it was a comment I read in an article by a Japanese man who said he was moved by the bravery of the men putting wives and children aboard lifeboats and telling gallant lies to comfort the little ones.
See it I did, however, and I was so visually stunned I entirely missed how lousy the movie was.
I went to see it a second time because my son had been reading about the Titanic and wanted to see how the sinking was depicted. This time I noticed how lame the characters and plot were.
I went to see it a third time because a friend of mine who doesn't have a car asked me to bring him and offered to treat me and my kids to popcorn and sodas, and pay for our tickets, if I'd take him. That last time I left the theater absolutely outraged.
Titanic is a sorry example of the moral decay of western civilization. Characters we were supposed to sympathize with were elbowing women and children out of their way to save their own miserable skins. Instead of reaching out to help the woman clutching a baby, Kate and Leo reminisce about the night they met. Leonardo hefts the worthless and shallow Kate onto the floating door to save her life, when he could have saved a dozen innocent children instead. Titanic was a monumental ego-trip and monument to selfishness. The only sympathetic characters were the designer, the captain, and the Irish widow with the two small children. I could smack Cameron in frustration -- imagine what a wonderful plot he could have built around this woman and Kate's shallow character! Picture it -- the widow flees Ireland to join her brother in America after the town rich creep offers to save her from poverty at the expense of her virtue. The widow sees Kate on the railing and gives her a picture of what suffering really is. Take it from there -- it can go in any number of directions far more interesting than the cookie-cutter lust story. Pathetic.
As I told my kids on the drive home from the theater, "If you every survive a shipwreck by ignoring the cries of drowning children, don't bother coming home."