The Legend of the Titanic

Nothing assures a quality viewing experience quite like needing to pause by the time that only two minutes have passed because the decisions that the filmmakers have made are so bewildering and flummoxing. Even recognizing how poorly it's regarded, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I sat to watch 'The legend of the Titanic.' I thought, after watching Camillo Teti's own animated Titanic film, 'Titanic: The legend goes on,' that there couldn't possibly, truly, be another comparable film that was so perplexing. I was wrong. This 1999 feature is effectively a series of one questionable choice after another, not to mention otherwise low quality. It's not that the entire picture carries that same baffling tenor all the way through, but nonetheless it's so plainly dubious from the very start that one knows immediately how rough it's going to be.

To be clear: this is a film set aboard the RMS Titanic, a vessel that sunk is a tragic humanitarian disaster at the loss of many lives, in an incident that's well known around the world. In this film, we're given bizarre fantastical elements of which anthropomorphized (and talking) animals are the least likely to raise a skeptical eyebrow. We're treated to the giddy silliness of Saturday morning cartoons, the type of gags and simplified writing geared toward the youngest of viewers. Some themes and ideas are common yet admirable, but are too direly heavy-handed, out of place, and/or oversimplified to come off well; furthermore, these are mixed into a narrative that flies in the face of all good reason (if not also good conscience given the setting), which is so sloppily written that it strains to even be cohesive, and which is mostly just downright weak and flimsy. The scene writing, dialogue, and characters that fill out this narrative are equally heavy-handed, out of place, and oversimplified, similarly defy good reason and conscience, and moreover are so shoddy as they present that it feels like the screenplay wasn't even fully finished as production began. The animation, meanwhile, ranges from bland and generic but broadly suitable, to mediocre and lacking - though some small details are more appreciable than others - and there were specific choices made in that capacity that just don't make much sense at all. And why is the giant octopus given the face of a teddy bear, more closely resembling a nightmarish monstrosity out of 'Akira?'

The editing feels as choppy as the writing too often is. The voice acting, or perhaps more accurately the direction of the voice acting, ranges from unremarkable to dubious, and the dubbing - particularly the matching of lip movements to spoken dialogue - is altogether slovenly in too many cases. In fairness, there are some sparing instances herein of ideas that were serviceable or possibly even "good." And no matter how much a title may flounder, I'm generally willing to give it a little more leeway if a production can at least be said to have represented earnest effort from those involved. Yet part of the problem with 'The legend of the Titanic' is that I'm at best unsure if even the latter is true. This goes beyond dramatization, beyond romanticization, and far, far beyond even "fantasy" to increasingly prove itself to be altogether outrageous in its far-out outlandishness and outright absurdity. There are thoughts here that I don't think would be acceptable even if it were a more conventional kids' cartoon, and the fact that all this takes place on board the RMS Titanic, twisting an infamous catastrophe into a brazen, almost farcical slice of confounding "family-friendly" schlock, is pretty much just plain contemptible.

What's really incredible is that I'm quite sure Orlando Corradi's Titanic movie is, in fact, worse than Teti's. Despite poor craftsmanship and astonishingly awful ideas, 'The legend goes on' was at least borne of honest if misplaced intent to tell an honest tale aboard the doomed ocean liner. This, in contrast, is overflowing with flagrantly immoderate cartoonishness, foolishness, and straight-up inanity, and it somehow only gets worse as the length draws on. The writing may have been baseline appropriate in any other context - if it were a purely fictional genre romp akin to 'SeaQuest DSV,' for example - or if writers Celelia Castaldo and Loris Peota, or Corradi in his capacity as producer, had simply deigned to declare that this was NOT a picture about the Titanic, but instead just some cruise ship conjured from the imagination. Nevertheless, even if that had been the case, this is so feebly written and otherwise made that entertainment is impossible. Entertainment is impossible, and moreover, the experience of watching is really all-around aggravating. I don't know what anyone thought they were doing when they conjured 'The legend of the Titanic,' but when all is said and done this is such an astoundingly terrible feature that the word "abomination" ultimately comes to mind. No matter what it is that has drawn one's attention to this title, let me speak in no uncertain terms: you should not watch this. No one should watch this. This is a creation that wholly deserves to be dropped into the memory hole of cinema history and lost forever. Ugh.

After the rapping dog in the other god awful animated film, I thought it was the worst thing I ever see on film based on the one of the most horrible tragedies in human history. Oh boy I was wrong, I was VERY wrong. What kind of people think this movie was such a good idea? What's next? Schindler's list with talking animals as a happy musical? I'll bet that will go well, you monsters.

One of the often-debated theories among film critics is whether artistry can make up for the most extreme of subject matter. The 'extreme' being the degree to which a film can be seemingly tasteless or have a potential left of moral offense. It's a good enough theory, but a movie like "The Legend of the Titanic" really forces one to reconsider their perception on it. This could very well be the worst movie of its kind. Production-wise, it's just mediocre and flat, but its immoral and mindless attitude toward one of the most infamous disasters in human history strikes like a hammer blow to the head. Again and again and again.

The movie was made in Italy just a year after James Cameron's mega-blockbuster "Titanic" hit big screen there. With a film with that mush fiscal success, it was not surprise that an array of rip-offs and cinematic plunderers would appear on the horizon. But who would have ever imagined that a picture like "The Legend of the Titanic" would ever work. The movie is not live-action like Mr. Cameron's film or the marvelous 1950s picture "A Night to Remember." It is animated, sometimes with a computer, othertimes with a hand-drawn feel. Now this picture is charting itself into an ocean full of cinematic icebergs, but it is the way that the screenplay is written and the horrifyingly amoral ideas are played out that much it such an unredeemed fiasco.

Not only does it borrow heavily from James Cameron's film, but practically every Disney production featuring a talking animal over the last five decades. The central characters are not people aboard the RMS Titanic, but talking mice. According to a grandfather mouse who survived the sinking of the ship, the stories of 1500 people drowning in the icy waters of the North Atlantic was all a cover-up; that not a life was lost at all in 1912. Most of it is told in flashback (where'd that come from, huh?) and this introductory plot-flipper is just the first of four or five of the dumbest twists in cinematic history.

The biggest sin of the picture is the rewriting of a tragic event. The only possible thing that I can imagine was running through the screenwriters' heads was not to make a depressing, sad movie for children to see. But that goes back to my point that an animated movie about the Titanic disaster was an iffy premise to begin with. But even if we can forgive it for trying to make children forget that more than a thousand people lost their lives in a single night so many years ago, surely we cannot when it tries to develop a plot using dopey methods such as mice being infatuated with human females, dolphins that learn to talk when a human tear touches their nose (with a healthy dose of "magic moon-beams" attached), a chaste love story where the two lovers discover they're meant to be together after dancing for half a minute, and the inclusion of sharks and a giant octopus propelling an iceberg into the path of the ship. And when, for a second, it tries to treat the disaster head-on, the picture chooses to laugh it away in the very next scene. And it is not very far along before one realizes that it's far more concerned about protection of whales than it is about honoring a historical tragedy.

However, even if the RMS Titanic story was just a fairytale as this movie would like us to believe, "The Legend of the Titanic" would still be a disaster. That theory of redeeming subject matter requires artistry and there is none to be found. The animation is flat, uninspired, and marred with an interruption of hand-drawn images with computer-generated sweep-overs of the ship which I am certain were pulled from a Titanic documentary. The dubbing for the English-language print is dreadful. Voice work is flimsy and oftentimes a vocal will be heard when an animated character's mouth is clearly buttoned up.

It's almost as if "The Legend of the Titanic" wanted to infuriate and offend its audience. What's more horrifying is that lots of people went to see the movie in its home country and that it was followed by a loose remake, also about talking animals and the sinking of the ship, called "Titanic: The Legend Goes On..." a slightly better film (in both of its versions) but still insulting to history and the intelligence of the viewer. One thing many of us would like to do would be to sit in on a meeting where a project like this gets greenlit. Because I can't imagine why anybody thought that an animated movie about the sinking of the RMS Titanic was a good idea.

100 years ago the RMS Titanic disembarked on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The ship was considered unsinkable and faster than any other ship by the crew and by the passengers. But the Titanic met her demise on the morning of April 15, 1912, costing over a thousand people their lives. Titanic to this day is considered one of the most devastating disasters in history.

Why am I going through all this? Because, what we didn't know was that the whole reason the ship sunk was because of a whaling scheme that involved sinking the Titanic by making talking sharks convince a talking giant octopus to unknowingly throw an iceberg in the direction of the ship just to cover their tracks. And there were talking mice on board and talking dolphins to try and help the ship. WHAT?!

Yes according to The Legend of the Titanic(released two years after the multi-billion dollar grossing blockbuster) that is the reason the Titanic went under. Perhaps I'd better go over the details.

Well an old mouse is telling his grand-kids his adventure aboard the Titanic(and no it's nothing like An American Tail)and explains that a rich girl named Elizabeth and her family were boarding the Titanic and the girl's father was a giant in the whaling business. She's engaged to a man named Maltravers who she clearly dislikes and passes by a group of gypsies. She meets eyes with one gypsy named Don Juan and the two instantly fall in love.

Somewhere along the line Elizabeth gets the power to talk to animals(long pointless explanation)and learns of Maltraver's true intent to force her father to give him some whaling rights. It turns out Maltraver's can communicate with a group of sharks and they get a giant octopus to move an iceberg in the direction of the Titanic.

From the there the film seems predictable; the ship sinks, people die, huge tragedy. But no, the octopus holds the ship together long enough to make sure every passenger gets in a lifeboat(despite the fact there weren't enough lifeboats) and even saves the captain who famously went down with the ship. In the end nobody dies. Let me say that again. NONE OF THE PASSENGERS ON THE TITANIC DIED! That's right kids, did you have a great granddad who boarded the Titanic? Oh he didn't die, he's just hiding.

From my summation of the movie it doesn't sound so ungodly awful. Let me assure you it is. It takes the tragedy of Titanic and sprinkles it with its anti-whaling message and talking animals and happy ending where no one dies. Don't get me wrong whaling is bad but what does it have to do with the hundreds of people who lost their lives in what could've been an easily avoided tragedy. And you know what? That's what this movie is, a potentially easily avoided travesty.

This film is so bad if it weren't for the fact that there is no 0 star rating I wouldn't even rate it with 1 star. It's an insult to the lost souls of Titanic and to the target audience the movie was going for and to audiences in general. If you can just avoid it.

The Legend of Titanic is not as abysmal as its sequel In Search of Titanic or the 2001 monstrosity Titanic:The Animated Movie(or The Legend Goes on). However, that is very faint praise, it is still terrible. The animation is alright, I wasn't impressed at all with the character designs but at least the colours were okay and the editing wasn't as all over the place as it was in the sequel or Titanic:The Animated Movie.

However, the music is poor. It is forgettable, and doesn't fit with the period at all. The dialogue is not even worth noting, other than to say it is forced and awful, while the story is rushed(the film is too short as well) and predictable with some unbelievable elements that insulted my intelligence to be honest. Not just the swing dancing, but also the mouse not dying from the electricity which had me shouting at my computer screen in disgust. And please do not get me started on the whole giant octopus idea. The characters are bland and unlikeable, and the voice acting is wooden.

All in all, an awful film, insulting and doesn't make sense. 1/10 Bethany Cox