No amount of filmmaking technique (alleged filmmaking technique, anyway) can make up for the way this movie, part publicity stunt, part soap opera, part grade-B teen romance, so extravagantly disrespects the tragedy the memory of which it abuses here. Like the vast majority of TITANIC movies ever made, it posits a fundamentally silly interpersonal drama against one the most horrific historical disasters of modern times. Like the vast majority of TITANIC movies ever made, it is eminently forgettable. Instead of an evocative and fitting tribute to the subject matter, we are subjected to a lot of ridiculous cliches, adolescent actors, and even geeky nerd humor, entirely and utterly inappropriate to the gravity of the core event. Under the circumstances, I felt it difficult to award it as many as the four of ten stars I condescended to give it here in reflection of whatever purely technical merits it might have.
If you want to see the movie that gives the telling of this catastrophe the justice it deserves, screen the Rank Organization's *A NIGHT TO REMEMBER* (1958), personally recommended - repeatedly - by no less a critic than real-life TITANIC survivor Eva Hart, recipient of an MBE from Queen Elizabeth for her contributions to recounting and memorializing the disaster.
If you want to see the movie that gives the telling of this catastrophe the justice it deserves, screen the Rank Organization's *A NIGHT TO REMEMBER* (1958), personally recommended - repeatedly - by no less a critic than real-life TITANIC survivor Eva Hart, recipient of an MBE from Queen Elizabeth for her contributions to recounting and memorializing the disaster.