Bewildering

Rating: 1/10 (26 February 2003)

It still bewilders me why so many people appear to like this movie. From a special effects point of view, fair enough, the ship sinking was impressive. However, the claims made for its sense of romance and the emotional force of the storyline leave me cold. This is a childish, foolish movie where we are somehow expected to care about the adolescent cravings of two cardboard "characters". I put the word "characters" in quotation marks as the reality is that anything approaching a realistic person is sorely absent from this picture. Types and stereotypes are all we get (and a lot of hammy acting - Billy Zane stick to "Tales from the Crypt: Demon Night", please; your over-the-top posturing was perfect in that, not so in this). Prior to its release there were rumours that "Titanic" was going to be a turkey. Doesn't anyone see those rumours were proved correct? If you want a real filmic account of the sinking of the Titanic, full of real characters, real intelligence and real feeling (and made with a tiny fraction of the budget of Cameron's bloated epic), just watch "A Night to Remember" (1958). Of course you won't have that hilarious scene where the kissing kids distract the night watchman from the iceberg, but you might see a more authentic account and a truly memorable movie.