The Critical Frog: Titanic (The Animated Musical)
I recently had a chance to sit down and watch James Cameron`s Titanic, and let me say, it was one of the finest movies I`ve ever seen. It`s amazing: it`s a good account of the disaster, it`s touching, the scenes are memorable, and it`s generally a great film. So when I heard that there were other Titanic movies, I had mixed feelings: I wasn`t sure whether they were going to be worth a movie night for. And boy, was I right to worry about that: I finally found another Titanic, but it wasn`t exactly what I expected. For one thing, it was a MUSICAL.
The fact that an animated movie about the Titanic exists is confusing enough, let alone the fact that It happened to be a musical, so this comes off as bad without even seeing the film. Titanic: The Legend Goes On is a peculiar flick for kids made by an Italian movie group (that fact that I`m part Italian makes me ashamed) attempting to tell the children of the world about the tragedy aboard the H.M.S Titanic with singing mice and a rapping dog. I am not making any of that up.
The movie is already noted for it`s extremely negative criticism- it is seen as one of the worst animated movies of all time- and it`s easy to see why : the movie has more subplots than Les Miserables and none of them get resolved, the characters are very 1-dimensional, and the fact that there is a rapping dog in a movie about the sinking of the Titanic does not help matters. So I was not exactly thrilled about watching this. But after watching, I discovered that this was not just a bad movie: it was a TERRIBLE movie. It`s probably one of the worst movies I`ve ever seen (right up there with Garbage Pail Kids... yes, I went there). With that said, let`s begin the review, so I can show you why this movie deserves to be the ship sinking in Voltaire`s "To The Bottom Of The Sea" album (with the exception that those songs are good, unlike the ones in this piece of crap).
Oddly enough, this movie begins begins with showing the survivors of the famous sinking rowing the life boats, which would be fine if they didn`t show it WHILE THE SHIP IS SINKING. We have one of the most dramatic scenes in cinema-the unsinkable ship sinking- and you focus on the people rowing the boat. Let this be a warning sign of the contents of the rest of the film: focusing on 1 thing when something much more important is happening in the background.
Because there clearly isn`t anything else going on right now.
The character has a flashback to the events of the ship, and so our story begins.
The flashback starts out with female lead Angelica (what was wrong with Rose?) being talked to by her evil stepmother and stepsisters as she stares at a locket. The locket aparrently has a picture of her mother in it that the sisters mock her over. The group is on a train leading them to bard the- you guessed it- the Titanic for a liesurely cruise. After this scene, we see 3 criminals bouncing along in a poorly-animated jalopy: two henchmen and what looks like a poor man`s version of Cruella DeVille. We then see a family of mice with Yiddish accents (who look kind of like the mice from An American Tail, but not as tear-jerking) board as well as seeing a man ogle a female with dalmatians. The man is Gaston, secretary to our male of the story, William (again with the name changes...what was wrong with Jack?) . Also boarding the boat fated for disaster are a cat, a magpie and a dog, along with a band of Mexican Mice. But we`ll get back to them later.
After everyone is aboard the ship, Angelica ponders if she will ever find her long-lost mother (of course she will, it`s a kid`s movie) while the stepmother abuses her: one of the stepsisters drops a tea cup on the floor and forces Angelica to pick up all the pieces (I`m pretty sure that`s just Tourettes Syndrome). And here is where it starts to go from `odd movie about the Titanic` to `An hour and a half of different cartoons taped together called Titanic`.
We see the Yiddish mouse family unpacking as they are attacked by a cat and a chihuahua (who never got any introduction or backstory). The mice recoil in fear only to be saved by the dog. The mice ask what they can do to save the herioc dog..... and he pulls on a jersey, a cap, takes out a boombox..... and starts rappping. I am DEAD SERIOUS.
This is, hands-down, the worst part of the movie: it`s dumb, comes out of nowhere for no reason, it`s tacky, and has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. I see absolutely nothing good about this scene. If you can fit in a perfectly good explanation as to why a rapping dog is in a movie about the Titanic, you are not sane.
Moving on, we see a subplot about the criminals mentioned earlier being jewel thieves being chased by a detective. Although the thieves probably don`t need a detective to get them.... they get their plans foiled all the time BY A DOG (thank god it doesn`t rap). When the dog goes away, they enter the room of a woman to rob her, but fail horribly. Aparrently that was worth a paragraph.
So the boy, William (the movie seems to have forgotten he was in the story) talks with his Nanny (I think he`s a little too old for one) about his dreams and his Nanny wonders if `her little girl` is OK (Seriously, take a wild guess who it is, you`re probably right). William walks out of the room and bumps into Angelica, and it is there that their eyes meet and they fall in love. And then Angelica leaves and we get back to the story.
By now, I think I`ve figured out some patterns with the movie:
-Everyone needs their own scene, including the rapping dog
-Pretty= good person, Ugly=Total jerk
-Love at first sight only applies on boats, and only between pretty people
And this is kind of role reversal from the original movie: it`s a rich boy and a poor girl instead of the opposite from the original. But again, what did that James Cameron guy know?
William talks with his Nanny about the girl he just met (she only said 1 sentence to you....) and then comes across a kid who`s ball just fell down a deck (clearly this is the worst thing that will happen on this excursion). Willian offers to go retrieve the ball and, of course, runs into Angelica. They dance a bit and William asks Angelica to go to the dancing area of the ship with him (what about the ball? I actually care about the ball more than I care about the plot!). But Angelica has nothing to wear, so she goes to a random passenger and she gives Angelica a dress to wear with some magical disappearing green gloves (they`re there in a few scenes and not in others).
After this, we see the animals on the ship looking for Angelica`s locket (she lost it earlier, but it`s not entirely clear when). But in this scene you can see some of the problems with the movie: the animals have no personality. They just seem like stock characters designed to appeal to children (which they are), but it would be nice if they gave these characters a few distinctive qualities. Half the time, they just make random noises.
Pictured above: Boring mice, a boring bird, and a boring rapping dog.
The animals manage to get the locket and return it to Angelica in time for her to show up and dance with William = During the dance, Angelica flashes back to the good times they had before the dance (all 2 of them), strangely. Didn`t the movie start with flashing us back anyway? Are we... flashing back in a flashback? Is this flashbackception? It just seems odd to me to flashback in the middle of a flashback. During the dance, the animals go down below deck to celebrate....something. It`s not quite clear. Personally, I think it`s because the dog never rapped again, but you take your pick of what it is.
And then, we FINALLY get to the part everyone wants to see: the ship comes in contact with the fated iceberg (he`s the hero of the movie at this point) and begins to sink. The crewmen try to fight the rising water with buckets- aside from this being a bad idea, they`re not even emptying the water back into the ocean. It looks like less of a sinking ship and more of a splash fight between grown men. At least their shirts are still on.
William goes to rescue Angelica from below deck (on the actual Titanic, 3rd class passengers were sealed off from the rest- when they emerged on deck, there weren`t many lifeboats) as the 3rd class passengers break through the metal gate keeping them from the upper deck, because aparrently people can rip through a metal gate like paper. William and Angelica are separated due to the shortage of lifeboats, but William promises to see her again (if this is still going according to original, he may be a little dead by then).
Angelica escapes the ship in time to watch it sink (but of course, they still focus on the freaking people). The jewel thieves escape as well, and laugh about things that are going on around them that I really can`t understand. Is this supposed to make us forget that in the background, hundreds of people are dying in the sinking ship? Because it`s not working.
William escapes the room he was left in through a window (even though there`s clearly a door), and grabs a small child to bring with him (to lifeboats or death, take your pick) as the ship FINALLY goes down for real. The sight of the ship going is so bad that it makes the dalamtians aboard the lifeboat cry (with experience as a j.r vet, I can say that that`s not possible). I actually feel more sorry for the dalmatians than William at this point- they probably have some eye infection leading to the discharge.
William and the kid make it to a floating crate from the doomed ship, a lifeboat comes to rescue the child (because the lifeboats totally came back to rescue all the passengers), but are unable to rescue William, because...well, plot convienence. Angelica`s lifeboat discovers someone who looks like William, but it turns out to be a random dude with an awesome mustache. They don`t actually pull him up (but he does appear in the boat later), and continue to look for William.
We also see that the animals are safe (Including that freaking rapping dog, much to the sadness of everyone watching). But what about the other people still fighting for their lives in the water? Well, you won`t believe this one.
DOLPHINS come and rescue people in the water while Angelica and Mr. Mustache rescue William, still floating on the crate. You know how the end goes in a kids movie: William is rescued, Angelica finds her mother (William`s Nanny quite obviously), and everyone is OK (including that stupid dog). And just when we think the movie is over and we can go home to drink away our memories of this, we hear the voice of the little Yiddish mouse:
"Wait! Don`t you want to know what happened to everybody?"
NO! No, I don`t! The ending is fine, and should pretty much satisfy: The two heroes get together and are safe. Okay. It`s done. You can go now. But no, this movie decides you need to know what happened to everyone: The two get married and adopt the dalmatians, and the jewel thieves marry the stepsisters. William`s secretary gets married as well, because we all wanted to know what happened to him. They are forgetting one thing, though: WHAT ABOUT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO DIED? Did they forget that little tidbit about the Titanic?Clearly the rapping dog was more important than that.
Overall, this movie was CRAP. The story is bad, the characters are bland, the subplots are almost never resolved, and it just plain reeks of lameness. This has got to be one of the worst movies EVER, and I hate it very much. If you enjoy this movie, you are either 5 years old or in a mental asylum. Also, THERE`S A FREAKING RAPPING DOG IN A MOVIE ABOUT THE TITANIC. Just by that sentence, you could tell that this movie doesn`t care about telling the story about the ship of dreams and more about squeezing every dollar out of the Titanic franchise. This ship should have sunk before it even got off the pier.
OVERALL RATING: 1/10
Yeah, this was terrible. Anyone who enjoys Titanic-or even knows what it was about-will hate this. Avoid at all costs.
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