Titanic

The movie was Titanic, the dinner was veggie burgers.

Winner of every Oscar ever.

Eric says:

Oh my days. This was so long, and so not good. The dialog was stilted, at best. The modern-day characters were ridiculous and annoying. There were a couple scenes in the film that were legitimately good. But that comprised maybe 3 minutes of a three-hour film. The musicians playing on the deck during the sinking was the best part of the film. (Interesting aside, Darcy is quite the Titanic buff, and he assures me that the band was not playing “Nearer My God to Thee” as popular legend has it, but rather an English tune called “Autumn” [that he has on his iPod!] that sounds a bit like “Nearer…”. It was fun talking to him about this because he knows so much crazy stuff about it!)

I get it. It’s a gigantic production. Cast of thousands. The sets. The crazy action movie sinking scenes. It was all a tour de force of cinema in 1997. The chemistry between Jack and Rose wasn’t amazing, but there was something there, so, that wasn’t all bad. The “draw me like your French girls” scene was good. As an added bonus for me, Bethany says that to the cats when they are lounging extravagantly and it’s funnier than I ever realized.

Watching this had a similar effect as when I finally watched Apocalypse Now, On the Waterfront, and The Deer Hunter. I had heard references to those films for ages, but it wasn’t until I actually saw the movies that I really got the jokes and references fully. Titanic was like that. It’s become so much a part of pop culture that seeing where all of the references and jokes come from is actually kind of fun. (I was angrily texting our book club about the “You jump I jump, Jack” line that plays a big part in Gilmore Girls. I had no idea it was a Titanic reference!)

The idea that this was the “cinematic love story of a generation” is ROUGH. It’s not a great love story. It’s just kind of brutal.

So yeah, cool sets and costumes and effects. I can only imagine seeing this on a big screen would be great for that stuff alone.

But overall, ouf. 2/10 and that’s me being kind. One for the few scenes I liked, and one for the costumes sets, and effects.  

Bethany says:

The year was 1997. I was 21 years old & I decided to take my Grandmother Shirley to go see the Titanic. The only way to watch this film is on the big screen. The costumes, the special effects and the sets are fan-flipping-tastic and they almost make up for the horrible plot and the terrible dialogue. Unfortunately, the 2^nd time I watched this film it was at home on my couch and although our tv is much larger than any tv I’ve ever owned it still didn’t do this movie justice. The one good thing about being at home was that I could leave room during the teenagers having sex in the back of the car scene, a scene I found insulting back in 1997 and even more so now.

You see dear readers even in my high school boy crazy days I found making out in cars a gross turn-off and I was always disappointed by films that kept this tired trope going. Speaking of tired tropes, I thought this was supposed to be a disaster movie not a horror movie and yet mere seconds after our young couple finishes copulating, their cheeks still flushed & their skin dewy, the ship runs into the iceberg ultimately leading to the death of Jack. Much like Friday the 13^th and Halloween it seems that even back in the olden days two young people having sex out of wedlock must be punished most severely.  I don’t know if the boat, the iceberg or the horrifying class system that was in place 1912 would take the place of Jason Voorhes in this scenario or if it was really all three, but stapling on a morality play onto this already bloated film seemed cheap and unseemly. Am I supposed to excited because for once the boy died instead of the girl? Because I’m not.

I’m also completely unimpressed by this supposed love story. I don’t think an upper-class girl in 1912 would run around a luxury cruise ship with a poor boy no matter how shitty her fiancé was. Also, did anyone notice that Rose told Jack that she loved him before he died, but he never said “I love you?” Sure, he told her that winning the ticket to board the Titanic was the best thing that ever happened to him, but it’s not really the same thing as saying I love you. Yeah, I know, I should cut the boy some slack, he was dying of hypothermia.

I’ll be honest folks: I’m probably too much of a jaded gen-xer to enjoy this movie. Thinking back if I could watch it with sound down and fast forward to all the pretty parts, I’d probably like it much more.

I was going to go on…but the movie went on and on, so I thought I’d just drown, err, I mean stop.

3/10 for the costumes, sets, and effects