Monumental Waste

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2018)

The real history of "Titanic" (some of which is touched on in this mess) is a compelling story. While this flick might be "Romeo and Juliet" at sea, I found the whole shebang was at sea.
The good thing is, "Titanic" is full of fine actors. From David Warner to Bernard Fox, right through Jonathan Hyde and even soap star Eric Braeden. The bad thing is, we don't see enough of them.
What we get is an awful lot of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. If either of those two (if you'll pardon the pun) "float your boat" then you're on easy street. I can't stand either of them and unfortunately what should have been a mawkish subplot is the mawkish major storyline (the "Trivia" item that Leonardo's part was offered to Johnny Depp and he declined practically broke my heart).
I tried making it through this gargantuan waste of celluloid with the lovers; then I tried fast forwarding through scenes of those two infernal bores . . . and realized I was losing nearly all the movie. There was no escaping them!
The movie's major flaw (apart from casting those two simps as the leads) is that the major part of the movie, set in 1912, doesn't really gel with the "modern" scenes. Furthermore, not for a moment did I buy Gloria Stuart as an older Kate Winslet. I assume that idea, which was presented up front and so isn't a spoiler, was carried on through the movie. I don't know because I was simply unable to finish watching "Titanic." It was BORING. Fortunately I was watching on VHS tapes I picked up for free at a book sale. It was on two tapes and I never bothered putting the second one in. I suppose that's where all the real drama and big effects come in, but the first half was so tedious I saw no reason to bother with the rest. After all, I know what happened to the ship in the end, though I won't reveal it here.
It's too bad because I was something of a "Titanic" buff in high school. Therefore, I was able to spot little historical errors. I also hate historical movies and tv shows where some familiar actor is introduced briefly as a real person and then the fictional (i.e., phony) story rolls on--in this case, the affair between Leonardo and Kate.
Perhaps it's a curse, but no really good movie has been made about "Titanic." the one with Clifton Webb was too soap operaish and had a silly ending. The one with Kenneth More tried to be fairly accurate with information known at the time (now all blown to bits by the discovery of the ship itself). This one is not really about "Titanic." It's about the love story, and is worthy of any 1970s disaster movie. It could be set on the Poseidon, in a Towering Inferno, or on Krakatoa. All I know is, it seemed to go on and on and on until little bits of me started dropping off. If I'd been on "Titanic" with those two I'd have gone down with the ship.
Perhaps people were drawn to this the same way they were to the practically endless "Doctor Zhivago" in the 1960s, for a fiery love story (at that time) set against a great historical backdrop. Too bad Omar Sharif wasn't the lover in this one. At least he's always been good for a few laughs. But Kate Winslet is no Julie Christie. And why should she be? She was bad enough in "Hamlet."
Overall, this must be the most overrated monster in the history of the talkies. It was supposed to be about the tragedy of "Titanic" with all its needlessly lost lives, yet I was reminded of the line of Oscar Wilde about a work of Dickens: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing." But "Titanic" doesn't even have enough hoots in it to make it as watchable as "Plan Nine from Outer Space." Just because something is popular doesn't make it good.