Le Titanic

The thing with this film is it had good points and it had bad points. Some of the good points are that there were aspects to this film that were far more realistic than James Cameron's. For instance, the young rogue that sneaks onto the ship does so not by winning a suspensful hand of poker, but by stealing the tickets when his drinking buddy has passed out for the evening. This is also the same young rogue who steals a jacket to get into the first-class dining room and then procedes to pick-pocket some of the passengers, starting with John Jacob Astor. The crooked crew member (played by Tim Curry) was a nice touch. And the rape scene was a gritty touch of realism, though painful to watch. And yes folks, stuff like that does, and did happen in real life. This film DID focus on real people that were on the ship, though not neccessarily the same ones as James Cameron. That is neither a good or bad thing, that is what you call a creative decision. For instance, we get a casual glimpse into JJ Astor's Young wife's life through Catherine Zeta-Jones' character, who is in a similar situation. They are friends and have a conversation about it. This makes it feel much more natural than Rose's hurried pointing around the room under the thin guise of gossip.

The thing with the Allisons' maid was interesting- the maid did, in fact, take the baby and get in a life boat, without the mother's consent, causing the parents and their little girl to roam the ship looking for them until it went down. Whether the maid was actually crazy was anybody's guess, but it was an interesting choice of plot in this film. Though just a touch too ridiculous. Captin Smith, though he had a famous actor behind him, was a little off character I thought. He had too much initiative. I'm not using James Cameron's portrayal as a basis for comparison, but Captain Smith, though he had years of sea-faring behind him, had had very little experience with intense situations of that sort and was actually very unprepared for the disaster. He didn't think anything could possibly happen on that voyage. I like Molly Brown better, I don't know why. And I really like the last shot of the first part (cause this was a TV flick)- when the people are kicking the ice around on deck, the camera focuses to the forground where someone has placed a champagne glass on the railing. It slowly slides down the now slight incline and smashes to pieces on the deck. When I saw that, I felt it was worth watching. Overall, this film, was, well, a TV film. Meaning it wasn't that great. But it wasn't that bad either.

Almost everyone's initial reaction is to compare it to the 1997 version of Titanic. Don't do this! I love the '97 movie as much as everyone else did, but I've noticed that a lot of the writing and actions were taken from this mini-series. All right, so this isn't a billion dollar idea with billions of dollars put into special effects. I liked this four hour movie mostly because it DIDN'T involve all of that. James Cameron put tons of money and people into his movie, plus a substantial amount of jewelry and clothing. He went down to the littlest of detail and while this mini-series doesn't involve every little thing that happened, it still gets the main points across.

After I watched A Night to Remember (1958) and this, I too, compared it to the 1997 one. Maybe a couple of you picked up on this and it may not mean a whole lot, but it does to me. A lot of the lines right down to word-for-word were copied into Cameron's. If I really want to go into detail, I could say that the film focuses on a wealthy woman in first class, and a young boy in third class that made his way on to the ship by accident. Although they don't fall into a deep love here, the character images are about the same.

The special effects that didn't take over the entire second half were well designed and not too fake to where it didn't even look half way real. I especially like the departure of the Titanic from Southampton dock. It gives a fairly good look at the ship here and throughout the movie. A ship/model that didn't have a lot of money put into considering it was a made-for-TV movie, was still very enjoyable.

The actors did an okay job. It was good how it focused on a couple of different characters and not just one or two. Really drew a picture of what everybody else was like. Other things like writing, costume design, and music were also drawn well. The attempt to recapture the look and atmosphere of the real ship was partly good. Mainly for the attempt and not actually finding it.

This was a good mini-series with a good topic to go off on. Titanic has been one of the most popular stories and epics of all time and it is good to see a variety of movies trying to portray it. Remember to rate this as a film of itself and NOT a duplicate of James Cameron's.

This made-for-TV version of the famous disaster actually stands up fairly well against its $200 million James Cameron counterpart. The effects are good - and in a few cases even on par with Cameron's version. Indeed, watching the two films back to back, you might be surprised at the similarities between the two versions, at least during some key moments. Both have steerage party scenes, for instance. The cast is generally strong too, particularly Catherine Zeta Jones in one of her first lead performances, and George C. Scott as Capt. Smith. But where Titanic (1996) hits all the wrong notes is in a poorly conceived subplot involving a crooked crewmember (Tim Curry). His character doesn't really belong here, and his villainous actions get to be quite shocking near the end ... it takes away from the human drama of the doomed people on the ship and actually comes close to ruining the movie (though no fault of actor Tim Curry, who turns in a great performance). If you only have time to see one super-long movie based on the disaster, see the Cameron film - if you've got time to see two, this one is worth the rental.

I have seen just about all off the Titanic movies there are. This definately isn't the best but it is worth seeing. Most Titanic movies portray the Astor's, the Straus's, Molly Brown, the wireless operators, and the captain. But this film also shows the story of the Allison's which is never told and they portrayed the story remarkably well. It also showed the third class story as well and did a good job with that one as well. It is a good movie to watch even though it is slow at times.

My Score 7.1/10

In all fairness, I can't see the pitch for this mini series as being another other than "Hollywood is producing a big-budget Titanic story - let's get there first." Fortunately, this isn't too bad, in fact, compared to a lot of the guff on television, it's actually quite good. There are as many historical innaccuracies as in Titanic '97 - but this mini-series has one redeeming feature - it is not a gob of sentimental pap. There is a fairly interesting narrative, sturdy direction, and a very good cast. It's a good effort, but everyone knows that every film about the sinking will be compared to the benchmark of "A Night to Remember". and so far, not one has come close.