A Mysterious Sinking

Rating: 3/10 (7 February 2001)

Trying to get beyond all the hype-- the ludicrous praise and the vehement reaction against-- I tried to rate this movie objectively, and and in doing so I gave it a three out of ten. It is not the worst movie ever made, and it's certainly not the best. Some nice special effects. Hackneyed two-dimensional characters and dialogue written for early teens, but not particularly offensive. Can be watched from start to finish once with only a dozen or so moments of cringing.
However, what did sink right along with that ship was the prestige of the Oscar Award itself. Now the Oscars have given out silly "Best Pictures" in the past, and there has always been a creeping element of the Grammies' "popularity contest" about them that kept them from ever getting too "high brow"; but with the choosing of "Titanic" as the Best Picture for 1997, I honestly believe that the Academy did serious damage to its reputation for many years to come. Previously, serious film lovers knew that while the Oscars certainly weren't a foolproof measure of quality; in retrospect, they have produced a list of the greatest films that, on the whole, stands the test of time just as well as any list created by the Cannes, Venice, Berlin or Toronto film festivals. But this year (1997) changed everything. Not only did they overlook one of the best films of the decade ("L.A. Confidential"), but they made an obvious bow to box office as a ratings ploy and lowest-common-denominator crowd pleaser. With time, the decision to crown an overgrown adolescent throwaway flick the best movie of the year will haunt them mercilessly-- if it doesn't already.