Titanic: La Caricatura

I honestly can't figure out why a bunch of old Italian exploitation regulars like Camillo Teti (who produced EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000) and a zany cast including former a few former porn stars (David Brandon - CALIGULA: THE UNTOLD STORY) and Gregory Snegoff (who did the English language voice dubbing in a number of Anime cartoons, etc.) got together and just suddenly decided to make a Disney/Don Bluth-style animated film. To my knowledge, this is the first internationally released animated movie to come out of Italy, and after viewing it twice, I realize that it's probably for a very good reason.

The animation is actually surprisingly good in places considering the circumstances and the fact that this film was made really, really on the cheap. However, as I said, it is really cheapo, with lots of the same shots being used over and over again. Also a lot of the time the frame rate seems to be really slow, like 5-6 frames per second where most Disney movies are 24. Therefore the movement looks a lot less fluid, almost slideshow-like.

As for the plot and concept of the film itself, it fits well with the lack of technical razzle-dazzle by providing equally an underwhelming story. Basically, there's several stories going on at once, but the film is so short that nothing comes out of any of the stories. There's the typical boy-meets-girl love story, itself a thinly disguised CINDERELLA, plus a subplot involving a Cruella Deville-type crooked lady and her two bumbling henchmen, a story of a detective hunting down some diamond thieves, an aspiring Celine Dion-esque Diva, and several mice resembling the cast of AN AMERICAN TALE. None of these stories have any sort of plot arc and exist only as filler before the ship finally hits the iceberg and many of the annoying characters are unfortunately rescued. As for the not-so-lucky ones, the film just glosses right over that sordid chapter of the Titanic disaster, which historically was not all the fun-and-games that this movie depicts it to be.

To put it bluntly, most parents will be so shocked at the mere mention of the title of the film that they'd not even consider buying it for their children. Thus, this film was bound from the conception stage to wind up as a financial disaster - and another sad reminder as to why the Italian movie industry is on the rocks.

This movie is by far the worst I have ever seen. Its baffling as to how this actually got released.

The animation is terrible and halfcocked. Half the time peoples mouths don't move at all and the other half they only flap up and down. The external shots of the boat are all done in 3d CGI and look terrible, even for 2000, while the rest is traditionally animated (which i can appreciate, at least)

The Voice cast is terrible, although I don't know how much can be blamed on them when the script is this bad. None of them have any sense of emotion behind them and they only seem to there for a paycheck.

I just can't recommend this movie to anyone, not even purveyors of shlock or terrible films.

I had some hope for this movie being any good but to be honest it's kind of disturbing how badly made animated films can get. For a start off the historical inaccuracy is really unforgivable, I won't bother to elaborate too much on this aspect because the list is very long. I will point out the biggest history flaw which is the rapping dog, in 1912 rap music didn't exist. The simplistic plot has no appeal to anyone at all and the love story is just like sticking masking tape over something to try and make it stick together. Nothing really fits together properly, the characters are as bland as they are drawn and clearly no thought has been put into the script. The dialogue isn't just corny because I can handle corny but just plainly unbelievable, one line in the movie is when the ship has almost sunk someone on the lifeboat says "don't worry everything is going to be fine", this is almost taking the Mick really. Over a thousand people are dying on a sinking ship and it's freezing, is that a realistic line? The best part of this film is the music just in case your wondering the piano isn't bad at all but beware of the Mexican mice and rapping dog.

Animation, now when watching a cartoon you expect the frame-rate to stay consistent throughout but for Titanic the legend goes with slow frame-rates really antagonises audiences from slowing down frame-rates in random places. The character animations are the most sloppiest I've seen in a long while and also colouring in some scenes makes the continuity bad. I noticed in the credits the many people who worked on animation and final checking, there were about ten "final checkers", did they actually watch the movie through and it get's worse next for editing.

Editing. I have never seen scenes repeated over and over to this extent in a movie before except in some cheap comedy sketch. There were five editors and the best they could have come up with was to repeat the same scenes just to make it up to full length. It's just plain lazy, all those people working on this movie and they have to repeat scenes. It makes the film flow just confusing and at one point it looks as if the ship has almost sunk and then suddenly they switch to another angle and the ship hasn't hardly sunk. Slowing down scenes, repeating scenes all this I think was done to try and get the movie to be full length which the movie still isn't.

Until they added the longest credits ever known in history, these credits basically showed names every two minutes while repeating the whole movie over, it's laughable. This movie is hard for any child, adult or any alike to enjoy this at all. In conclusion if your looking for the worst animated film ever and want a good laugh I recommend it, that's why it got two stars from me. But anyone who wants to watch a truly decent animated film that isn't a real waste, your going to have to look somewhere else. Those seeking a Titanic film which is fine for children to watch I recommend "A Night to Remember".

Plot = 1/10 Animation = 3/10 Voice acting = 2/10 Music = 5/10 Entertainment value = 1/10 (For a laugh 9/10) Overall = 2/10

This is clearly the worst animated musical I have every seen in my life. I honestly don't know ware to begin because there so much wrong with it that I can't fit it all in to one review. So keep in mind this review is just the tip of the iceberg to how bad this movie is. My first problem with this movie is the idea of trying to take the real life tragedy of Titanic and attempting to turn it in to a goofy, happy and feel good event. Thousand of innocent men, women and children drowned or freeze to death due to the fact they were not prepared for a sinking. Yet this not only dumb down those real life horrors but flat out ignores them and attempts to make things all bright and cheery with a bunch badly drawn cartoon animals that cant sing (or rap). Yes dear reader, there a rap song in this movie (a horrible one to) that comes out of no ware from a dog. One moment he saving a mouse and then he is holding a boom box's, warring a backwards cap and jerseys in a movie about Titanic! The second major problem of this movie is that there where way to many sub plots. It's not uncommon for movie to have one sub plot or possibly two but this movie (including the main story) has at least seven plots and all them do a very poor job at being tied in to gather. I'm also surprise there was no law suits against this movie. All the character here are rip off of popular American films ( mainly children film) There Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, American Tail, Looney Toons and whole bunch of other non original characters. In spite of the fact movie it's given a lot film time it doesn't use any of it to fully devolve any of the characters. Instead it seem to be in a constant rush from jumping from one sub plot to another. The movie would of been better off deleting half these characters and throwing away all the useless sub plots which where causing it be confusing. All it did was kept characters from having a chance to be more conplete.

Rather then drawling us a whole scene they simply replay footage again and again. As a result it's really hard to tell what's going on in some scenes because it just a jumble mess of repeated clips. Even when you do know what's going on its still painful because the use of stock footage gets very repetitive, tiresome and just shows that there was no effort put into this. Do you really need to see the same ugly drawling doing the same thing 10 times in a row in a single shot? This lead to the next problem. The Animation is dull, plain and as lifeless as all the characters in this movie. The dubbing is bad, movement is choppy and it simply ugly looking. This movie is just as painful to look at as the song are painful to listen to. Lucky for us there's only 3 songs and they all stink! There's the out of place dog Rap, A Mexican salsa song and the love song that keeps being played over and over to pass as more then one song, now that's just cheap. The movie doesn't even try to fill in it's own plot holes. For Example there a Cat and Chihuahua who never do anything to begin with are one moment in there cabins with there owners and then the next moment there locked up in a cage in the storage room. Why? I don't know, the movie never explained it.

Finally there the ending that's just a big spit in the face to what really happen that night. There goofy unfunny humor as the ship sinks, the animals are saved by Dolphins and everyone given a happy ending in spite of the lost of thousands of people! There nothing redeeming about this movie at all. Its ugly, confusing, and builds it self by stealing from more successful film. Plus some might find the whole idea of this film offensive. I would not recommend this movie to anyone, not to adults or Kids because watching it only cause's people to drown in the misery it in flicks on us.

That I why I give this shipwreck a 1 out of 10.

Okay maybe I was being a bit too harsh when I wrote that, but the truth is that Titanic:The Animated Movie (or the Legend Goes On) is frankly awful. First things first, if you want to see a better version, the James Cameron version is great. While ambitious, it is well acted and sumptuously filmed. Even the 1996 mini-series was better than this, and that had a lot wrong with that. Personally I do think it was a bad idea making one of the most tragic moments in history into an animated film, that is condensed and rather empty. I don't know where to begin criticising this film, and it needs a lot of criticising, as there is very little good about it.

To cut to the chase, I was very unimpressed with the animation for a start. It was dull and tacky, and where was the colour and the vibrancy? Plus some of the character movements were so forced particularly the facial expressions of the ugly stepsisters; if I were to be honest, the film looks as though it has been made on the cheap. I am not the only person who spotted this, but some of the shots were repeated over and over again, and it was distracting. And it certainly doesn't help that the editing was all over the place. Even some of the Jetlag and Golden Film productions have better animation, and they are low budget for goodness sake.

The music wasn't that much better. The incidental music is kind of pleasant if unmemorable, but in general the songs were poor. Maybe not as bad as the mind numbingly awful songs from Secret of NIMH 2:Timmy To The Rescue, and not as badly sung either, but that is not saying much. I think I need to start with the worst one. That was "Party Time", in my opinion that is a perfect example of a song that is completely unnecessary to the story, and one that is so bad it is hilarious. From the abysmal lyrics to the awful rapping that was out of time in some places, it was horrible to listen to. As soon as the rapping dog arrived on the scene I knew we were going to be in trouble. "Mucho Gusto" fared better, but I remember for a salsa song it lacked energy, spice and pizazz. Without those three things, a salsa song sounds lifeless, and that was the problem I had with the song. The best one and for me, the only redeeming quality of the film was the song "Holding Me". This was sublimely sung, has meaningful lyrics and a nice melody. However, it deserved a much better movie.

Another major problem was the story. Too many back stories crammed into such a short running time, the film is barely even an hour, and as a result the characters seemed underdeveloped and the situations rushed. Also the film has a tendency to be too slow. Well there's the subplot of thieves robbing cabins-sounds like something stolen from the Titanic mini-series, and a love story between Anjelica and William that was rather out of the blue I must say, and I didn't really get the sense they cared for one another until the ending. What angered me was that this film ripped off movies from my childhood. Cinderella is the most obvious one, then there's American Tail, The Secret of NIMH, Beauty and the Beast with Gaston, 101 Dalmatians, Sherlock Holmes(Conan Doyle must be turning in his grave over this one)and even the Cameron movie itself. I'm surprised this wasn't sued for plagiarism.

Maybe I am alone in this, but the characters didn't seem very likable. Anjelica, instead of the headstrong, determined and vivacious protagonist I was hoping for, then again maybe my expectations were too high, was as dull as dish water. William is a rather clichéd love interest, and despite the fact he is optimistic just as dull as well, and the stepsisters were really annoying with high pitched voices that make you want to cover your ears. Not even the animals had any real charm.

The script is, how do I put it, bad. There is very little humour here, and the writing is clichéd and stale. You always feel as though you have heard it all before, I certainly have. So much so, the secondary characters including the stepmother, have very little to do, and the dialogue between Angelica and William is sappy and wishy washy. If there was any comedy, it was unintentional. I am principally talking about the ending, where the writers completely obliterated the poignancy and tragedy that the ending should've had with some ridiculous ideas like the animals being saved by dolphins and then the men throwing the water over the side with buckets. Yeah, you saw right buckets, as if THAT was going to solve anything. The ending left me dissatisfied, not only because it was a happy ending but also the whole film felt rather abrupt.

Not only were the characters lifeless and unengaging but the same applies with the voice acting. Very few of the actors have the energy to carry an already empty film. Lisa Russo tries her best with Anjelica but she is severely hampered by the material she is given. Same with Mark Thompson-Ashworth as William. Some of the actors such as Kenneth Balton as the Captain sounded as though they were reading out loud from a text book, and believe me that can be quite boring. This also happened to be Edmund Perdum's last film, and he is given so little to work with as Jeremy.

All in all, this was a real shipwreck. A bad idea really, and it was executed even worse. 1/10 for the song "Holding me". Bethany Cox