Titanic: Critic Reviews

Titanic is a good, often stunning movie caught in a three-and-a-half hour drift.

This is Cameron at his best.

As spectacle, Titanic sets a new standard; as romantic drama, it's substandard.

Titanic runs well enough in the backstretch of intrigue and contrivance to cross the finish line well ahead of all but a few of the screen's superspectacles in this century.

A spectacular demonstration of what modern technology can contribute to dramatic storytelling.

The would-be emotional centerpiece of his three-hours-plus adventure flick is the most juvenile romantic tale of 1997.

Titanic is awesome even when it's awful -- you can't take your eyes off the extraordinary thing.

Now it can be told: The Titanic went down because of two distracting smoochers on the poop deck.

A grand and classy production.

The regretful verdict here: dead in the water.

What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities.

Great movie, but not appropriate for all kids.

Exactly what it says on the label: a deliciously overwrought melodramatic love story, capped off with one of the greatest special effects achievements of the 1990s.

Feeling dispassionate about Titanic is a bit like being stranded alone on the North Atlantic.

Extravagant, exhilarating, devastating, poetic, romantic and totally unforgettable, Titanic is an extraordinary achievement in film making, where technology astounds, yet the human story shines even brighter

You will walk out of Titanic not talking about budget or running time, but of its enormous emotive power, big as the engines of the ship itself, determined as its giant propellers to gouge into your heart, and as lasting as the love story that propels it.

Titanic is big, bold, touchingly uncynical filmmaking.

In the end, Cameron's monumental epic still prises open the tear ducts.

Cameron skillfully applies sophisticated special effects to classic American storytelling, resulting in a winning combination of a tale that's modern and old-fashioned, delivering the goods expected of the disaster genre.

There is nothing to dislike about this film.

Perhaps the most melancholy thing about Titanic is its celebration of romantic ideals to the exclusion of such self-denying virtues as honor, duty, and heroism.

Cost: well over $200m. Disregarding the ethics of such expenditure on a film, this unprecedented extravagance has not resulted in sophisticated or even very satisfying storytelling.

A brilliantly designed, but emotionally shallow romance set during the infamous sinking of the luxury liner in 1912.

It's something of an ingenuous revision of the standard disaster movie.

An enormous technical achievement with a wonderfully big heart.