1997 - TITANIC, junk the first time still junk 13 years later

How do you spend a Friday night when the family's home sick, you watch Titanic on TBS of course. This was as bad as I remembered it to be when I first saw it in 1997.  I had just purchased my first cell phone and played with it constantly during the film to keep myself entertained.

Even in 1997 the state of the art computer effects looked kind of fake and time has not been very kind to that aspect of this film.  During the climatic sinking scene, DiCaprio and Winslet are acting behind a green screen and lot of the birds eye camera shots of the ship have people who are obviously computer generated.

As a production, it was big and at the time it came out the most expensive film ever made.  The original plan was probably to sell the film as a disaster spectacular.  However, something strange happened, teenage girls responded to the love story aspect and made Titanic a big hit by going to it over and over and over.

The story and dialog are still pretty horrible, James Cameron may be a master of special effects in the film business, but he sure couldn't create interesting situations or believable characters which kind of amazes when you consider the story of the Titanic should have enough built in drama to it.  Cameron's need to juice it up with a romantic triangle with Rose's evil fiance, mighty lame.  Cameron makes him a villain so unbelievably clownishly evil that it manages to make the film sink into even more ridiculous melodrama than actually possible.

The actors do what they can to make this dumb film somewhat credible. Kate Winslet's stupid character of Rose the spoiled rich girl who sees the light must mean that Winslet can act because she  actually  makes her kind of interesting. Leo DiCaprio's Jack, the "good looking man of the world"  isn't much better. but DiCaprio actually manages to bring him to life as well.    

James Cameron directs the film with most of his interest appearing to be in staging creative ways to drown people in freezing water.

I have just never understood the incredible popularity of this film.

194that sinking feeling minutes.