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Here are what other movie critics are saying about Titanic?
"...James Cameron�s Titanic is a lush and terrifying spectacle of romantic doom... Titanic floods you with elemental passion in a way that invites comparison with the original movie spectacles of D.W. Griffith. It�s the first disaster movie that can truly be called a work of art." � Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly.
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"...For once the special effects are in service with the story...Is it the great love story Cameron so desperately wanted to make? Not quite... Cameron�s strength is in painting canvases with broad, visceral, unironic strokes, and for 194 minutes he holds you in his grip..." � Corrie Brown and David Ansen of Newsweek.
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"...in the 90 or so minutes before the iceberg slices open the starboard side, some compelling romantic fiction is in order. Here the film fails utterly. It imagines an affair between free-spirited artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) in steerage and Philadelphia blueblood Rose Bukater (Kate Winslet), unhappily engaged to wealthy Cal Hockley (Billy Zane).... The regretful verdict here: Dead in the water." � Richard Corliss of Time Magazine.
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"James Cameron's three-hour Titanic (four out of four) can be picked at but, unlike its subject, not broken part. To those seeking the full movie experience and the return of showmanship, welcome to one-stop Christmas shopping. With its every neon frame reflecting a reported $200 million budget, Titanic nearly exclusively recalls the reserved-seat "event" attractions of the mid-1950s to mid-'60s...." � Mike Clark of USA Today.
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"Two Thumbs Up!"--- Siskel and Ebert
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"If they don't call him an idiot for his expenditure, they'll surely call him one for his writing. Obviously, Cameron was going to sink or swim with this project, but couldn't he have subsumed his world-class ego for one second and given the writing assignment to somebody with an imagination?" � Mr. Cranky of Mr. Cranky�s Guide to the Movies.
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"...Many of the film�s best moments come from secondary players portraying real-life passengers, like the brazen "new moneyed" Molly Brown (Kathy Bates). And as boat Captain E.J. Smith and master shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, Bernard Hill and Victor Garber fill their small roles with tragic nobility. Best of all in Titanic is the boat itself. Before we ever see his recreation of the vessel, Cameron takes us the bottom of the ocean to see the ghostly remains of the wreckage. In a long underwater tracking sequence, the camera homes in on a crystal chandelier and a dilapidated piano as we hear the faint sounds of ballroom music. It�s a beautiful, haunting precursor to the thrilling finale of the ship�s inevitable collapse." � Kevin Maynard for Mr. Showbiz.
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"...Cameron told me it would not be enough for him if people said they didn�t like the story or the acting or his execution of his intent to put people ahead of spectacle � but that the technology alone was worth the price of admission. In many cases, though, it may have to be. His script, and his actors, largely let him down. And to hear DiCaprio and Winslett use the line "No! This way!" for what seems like 20 times subtracts from what is on occasion � such as in the case of the musicians or Garber�s guilt-stricken ship designer � pure movie magic... Did he succeed in telling his human story? Sadly, only intermittently." � Keith Olbermann for MSNBC.
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"...seeing Titanic almost makes you weep in frustration. Not because of the excessive budget, not even because it recalls the unnecessary loss of life in the real 1912 catastrophe, which saw more than 1,500 of the 2,200-plus passengers dying when an iceberg sliced the ship open like a can opener. What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't even close. Cameron has regularly come up with his own scripts in the past, but in a better world someone would have had the nerve to tell him or he would have realized himself that creating a moving and creditable love story is a different order of business from coming up with wisecracks for Arnold Schwarzenegger..." � Kenneth Turan for the Los Angeles Times.
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"James Cameron's Titanic is the Gone With the Wind of disaster movies. In its own delirious way, Titanic shares all the attributes and shortcomings of that juicy American epic: the size, the length, the simplified (but sweeping) melodrama, the hoke, the corn, the blood-red sunsets. Like GWTW, this film isn�t seriously interested in the social system of its era (even though there is time spent describing it) except as that social system affects the melodrama of the gorgeous young lovers... Like it or hate it, Titanic lives and breathes as a piece of pure cinema." � Robert Horton for Film.com.
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"...the human interest story that occupies fully two-thirds of this three hour plus epic is so flat and unconvincing that, for once, you find yourself longing for the disaster footage to start... Don't get me wrong. This film, which stars the super-popular Leonardo DiCaprio and the talented Kate Winslet, is certainly watchable... And when the disaster starts, Cameron is at his best... But the love story she [Titanic] tells, on the other hand, seldom rises above the level of a television movie-of-the-week...and the plot (repressed rich girl, being forced into a loveless marriage of convenience, who is rescued by the life-force-filled working-class boy from below decks) seldom rises above the level of clich�." � Peter Brunette also for Film.com.
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"...Putting all the human-interest eggs into a flimsy romantic basket exposes Mr. Cameron as a matchmaker and historical dramatist of trifling magnitude. He remains hostage to a pipsqueak muse... The youthfully illicit and enraptured tilt of his love story suggests MTV-generation narrowness, mindlessness and anachronism. Mr. Cameron lacks the experience and sophistication necessary to portray Edwardian social distinctions and nuances. His aptitude as a screenwriter, previously confined to science-fiction disaster pretexts, fails while traveling backward in time to 1912...." � Gary Arnold for the Washington Times.
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"...It's a big, splashy movie about a disaster that does not itself turn into a disaster. It floats triumphantly, supplying the rationale Hollywood craves for its own perpetually titanic profligacy. It's the kind of movie Hollywood believes in, has bonded its soul to, wants to see validated, needs to believe can blow the competition out of the water... Cameron, who also wrote the film, has never been one to dig deeply into romantic or any other feelings, and he doesn't do so here. But if the romance is hokey, it keeps the film from being solely about the technical side of rendering the legendary disaster... ''Titanic'' is the best disaster movie money can buy." � Jay Carr for the Boston Globe.
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"...James Cameron's "I Was a Teenage Titanic" -- excuse me, "Titanic" -- serves up an hour and 40 minutes of shipboard puppy love before its computer-gene rated liner strikes a computer-generated floe... This mediocre romance is followed by another hour and 40 minutes of mediocre disaster movie... The problems go beyond the routine roundelay of cowardice and heroism, and Zane waving his silly pistol... In sum, "Titanic" is so expensively vacuous, so resplendently mediocre, that it automatically becomes the front-runner for this year's Academy Award." � Bob Campbell for the Star Ledger.
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