Titanic Review
by "Michael J. Legeros" (legeros AT pagesz DOT net)December 24th, 1997
Titanic (1997)
A movie review by Michael J. Legeros
Copyright 1997 by Michael J. Legeros
(Paramount)
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron
Cast Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bill Paxton, Bernard Hill, David Warner
MPAA Rating "PG-13"
Running Time 184 minutes
Reviewed at Mission Valley Cinemas, Raleigh, NC (16DEC97)
==
What to say about James Cameron's TITANIC? Well, you certainly get your money's worth. $200 mil is right there, right up on the damn screen, with a lavishly, expertly, meticulously recreated and nearly full-size version of the great lady herself. However it succeeds (or fails) as a narrative, by golly Ms. Unsinkable Molly, you *do* get to take that once-in-a-lifetime time-machine tour. Up and down and around we're guided, from stem to stern, in and out of staterooms, ball rooms, dining halls, cargo holds, and even the boiler room. (And, geez, will you ever forget the sight of those massive pistons in the engine room?) These endlessly fascinating period details are the film's greatest as- set, guaranteed to hold your interest, no matter how expertly (or poor- ly) Cameron handles both the characters and the story. Well, that is, *both* stories. Not counting the curiously flat framing device-- a modern-day deep-sea treasure hunt, starring Bill Paxton and featuring Cameron's own footage (!) of the wreck itself-- TITANIC is actually *two* movies in one.
The first is a breezy but embarrassingly juvenile love story, about a Third Class boy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a First Class girl (Kate Win- slet) and the forces that conspire to keep them apart. (One of which is her well-to-do but narrow-minded fiancee, Billy Zane, doing Snidely Whiplash sans mustache.) JAMES CAMERON'S ROMEO AND JULIET runs about an hour and a half and, if the teen romance doesn't strike a chord, you're probably doomed to dwell on some of the worser aspects of the film: corny dialogue, repetitive shots, weak supporting characters, a cloying Celtic/New Age score, and, on most of the daylight exteriors, an odd and presumably special effects-induced "haze." And, yet, even if you can't believe it and run with it, those ninety or so minutes pass pretty quickly because there *is* so much atmosphere to take in. (Cameron pulls out so many stops and delivers such an embarrassment of riches that you really have to step back from stepping back to get cranky about the stuff that sucks.)
TITANIC-- not *The* Titanic. Just Titanic-- is also a disaster movie. Perhaps the granddaddy of all disaster movies. (Or, at the very least, the granddaddy of all POSEIDON ADVENTURE remakes.) Using compu- ters and models and moving sets, Cameron successfully, believably, astonishingly recreates *the* great failure of 20th Century technology. Whatever the liabilities of the script-- and, oh God, there are so many of them-- the images speak for themselves: an elderly couple preparing to drown together in bed, the ass end of a great ship rising higher and higher into the air, the pained, pale expressions of lifeboat passen- gers, wincing at the distant screams of the dying. It's an hour of film that has to be seen to be believed and, perhaps, be ultimately disap- pointed by. (In particular, the death throes are drawn out to an almost comic extreme. If you're in a sarcastic mood, comparisons to the for- ever-and-a-day finale of SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL won't be far behind.) But when we've returned to present day, our tears dried and the pains of a poor script promptly forgotten, the likely reaction of any paying cus- tomer will be, well, that they got their money's worth. And, really, isn't that the name of the game?
Grade: B+
--
Mike Legeros - Movie Hell
http://www.nonvirtual.com/hell
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
