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Titanic
Paramount Pictures

Titanic reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 74 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
7.6 out of 10
based on 34 reviews
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How did we calculate this?
based on 104 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for disaster related peril and violence, nudity, sensuality and brief language

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, and Gloria Stuart

A fictional romantic tale of a rich girl (Winslet) and a poor bohemian boy (DiCaprio) who meet on the ill-fated voyage of the 'unsinkable' ship.


GENRE(S): Romance  
WRITTEN BY: James Cameron  
DIRECTED BY: James Cameron  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: August 31, 1999 
Video: August 31, 1999 
Theatrical: December 19, 1997 
RUNNING TIME: 194 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
ReelViews James Berardinelli
You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it.
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100
The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
With the ship, with its totality of people, Cameron is wizardly, creating an entire society threading through the various strata of a world that has been set afloat from the rest of the world. [Jan. 5, 1998]
100
TNT RoughCut Andy Jones
A heart-tugging potboiler that is at once poetic, tragic and cold as steel.
100
New York Daily News Dave Kehr
It leaves the port of enterprise and arrives on the far shore of art.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding.
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100
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Titanic floods you with elemental passion in a way that invites comparison with the original movie spectacles of D.W. Griffith.
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100
The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
A huge, thrilling three-and-a-quarter-hour experience that unerringly lures viewers into the beauty and heartbreak of its lost world.
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100
USA Today Mike Clark
His (Cameron) movie may not be perfect, but visually and viscerally, it pretty well is.
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100
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A film that sweeps us away into a world of spectacle, beauty and excitement, a realm of fantasy unimaginable without the movies.
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100
Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday
The title represents size and power, speed and hubris -- the very things the ship has come to stand for and the things that Cameron has restored to the cinema with grand, generous style.
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100
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's quite possible that Titanic is one of the greatest romantic epics ever filmed.
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90
The Onion (A.V. Club) Maria Schneider
That the familiar story of the Titanic disaster is told with suspense is not as surprising as Cameron's clear-headed balance of truth and fiction, spectacle and tragedy.
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90
Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
One hell of a movie.
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90
Variety Todd McCarthy
A spectacular demonstration of what modern technology can contribute to dramatic storytelling.
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90
Mr. Showbiz Kevin Maynard
Will take you by surprise as a romantic, fast-paced, entertaining spectacle that deserves to earn back every penny spent to produce it.
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90
Newsweek David Ansen
The true allure of Titanic is its invitation to swoon at a scale of epic moviemaking that is all but obsolete.
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80
Dallas Observer Peter Rainer
It's a powerfully ersatz experience, but at least it's powerful. There's a lot to like here: At three hours and 14 minutes, the film takes longer to watch than the Titanic took to sink.
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78
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Like the doomed vessel from which it takes its tale, Cameron's film is a behemoth, svelte, streamlined, and not the least bit ponderous.
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75
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The first half drags a bit, but the adventure scenes are exciting and the visual effects are as dazzling as Hollywood's most advanced technology can make them. Focusing as much on time and memory as on danger and disaster, it's an epic with a heart.
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75
Boston Globe Jay Carr
Titanic is a big-budget spectacle and director Cameron brings it off with high-tech bravura, placing us aboard the ship in real time.
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75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Titanic is awesome even when it's awful -- you can't take your eyes off the extraordinary thing.
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70
Film.com John Hartl
Technically, Titanic is a marvel.
70
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Cameron captures the majesty, the tragedy, the fury and the futility of the event in a way that supersedes his trivial attempts to melodramatize it.
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70
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
It's both the shortest 3 1/2 hours you'll ever spend at the movies and spectacle of such magnitude that it's hard to imagine feeling you didn't get your time and money's worth.
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70
Film.com Robert Horton
Like it or hate it, Titanic lives and breathes as a piece of pure cinema.
60
Washington Post Desson Thomson
This movie should have blown us out of the water. Instead we catch ourselves occasionally thinking the unpardonable thought: "OK, sink already."
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50
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The last hour of Titanic is huge and staggering, but there's no horror in it. No gravity, either. Entrusted with one of the century's monumental stories, Cameron can present it only as a crying shame. And that's a crying shame.
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50
Film.com Tom Keogh
The would-be emotional centerpiece of his three-hours-plus adventure flick is the most juvenile romantic tale of 1997.
50
Film.com Peter Brunette
The human interest story that occupies fully two-thirds of this three hour plus epic is so flat and unconvincing that, for once, you find yourself longing for the disaster footage to start.
50
Slate David Edelstein
Cameron has never been known for his dialogue, but Titanic carries some stinkers that wouldn't make the final draft of a "Days of Our Lives" script.
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50
Time Richard Corliss
Ultimately, Titanic will sail or sink not on its budget but on its merits as drama and spectacle. The regretful verdict here: Dead in the water.
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38
San Francisco Examiner G. Allen Johnson
No amount of excellent period costuming and brilliant set decoration can substitute for a good story and decent acting.
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30
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What audiences end up with word-wise is a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances, a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality.
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20
Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Cameron manhandles the real story, scavenging it for his own puny narrative purposes. It's a film made with boorish confidence and zero sensitivity, big and dumb and hulking.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 104 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Lawrence Y. gave it a1:
If you like disaster films, this is the film for you. But if you dont like to see love in a disaster film, just leave this one alone.

Stephen B. gave it a1:
Mr. Cameron started his career by establishing himself as a great science-fiction writer/director, able to simultaneously be exciting and smart. He delievered on that promise with the two "Terminator" films and the completely awesome "Aliens". In fact, in some jurisdictions, not liking "Aliens" is considered a criminal act. However, having proved his talent at greatness, he decided to switch gears and try sucking for a change. And so we have... this... abomination. Gone are the great writing and pacing that anchored his previous sci-fi outings, instead replaced with a laughable script, incessant repetition and miscasting galore. There are no characters, just cardboard cutouts. The historic mistakes are mind-boggling. Even composer James Horner turns in a huge pile of cliched, faux-"romantic" gloop, all the more travesty if you remember he did the rousing score of "Aliens". Yes, the SFX is good and probably the only part of the film I will ever find anything positive to say. I have no idea why the director abandoned the niche he was most successful in for another where he fails. The final impression: "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit".

Cody G. gave it a10:
I loved the movie Titanic the only part i disagree with is the scene in which Kate Winslet is nude. One of my favorite scenes is when the ship hits the iceberg another one is where the ship goes under. One thing I think is possible is where First officer Murdoch commended suicide. It was reported by many survivors and i think it really did happen.

Kaitlynn H. gave it a10:
This movie was a good makeing. It really explains true love. But it also makes you think twice before getting on a ship or a boat in the icey waters.

Jake L gave it a10:
One of the great epics stirring, epic, breathtaking, even after The Dark Knight this is still the #1 movie of all time.

Roy gave it a9:
I don't get all the hate for this film, sure i hated leornado di'caprio in this film, i thought he was a weak lead, would have preffered someone like say Brad Pitt or johnny depp, and the romace is a little boyish at time, but you can't deny the cinematography excellence of this film, still haven't been matched till this day.

Jae q gave it a4:
There's Great, Good, Okay, Bad, and Terrible when it comes to movies, This one is somewhere between okay and bad, don't mean to be sexist, but many girls and women tend to see movies for other things than what they are, in this case, pretty boy leonardo decaprio in a 4 hour softcore porno, same idea with brokeback mountain , imagine a stupid chick flick that takes a 5/10, now put homsexual romance in it, goldmine.

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