Titanic

Soapy melodrama aside, Titanic does a fine job giving viewers a sense of what it was like to be aboard the doomed vessel.

While Titanic gets melodramatic and even a little soapy, it achieves what seems to be its main goal: to remind us that when the ship went down, the most terrible loss may have been 1,500 dreams.

Alas, most of the other characters are so weakly sketched, they don't make a ripple.

It's like watching a manor house sink beneath the waves with loud, hissing pomp. [16 Apr 2012, p.50]

The cast is universally fine, but there's honestly nothing much it can do to avoid being swamped with Fellowes' arrogant attempt to capture the social dimensions of turn-of-the-century Britain, oh, and the sinking of this big boat too.

Despite its meandering soapiness, there are passing moments of enjoyable "Downton"-like momentum wherein a viewer can eventually let go of the Cameron version (and "A Night to Remember" and the many, many documentaries in cable rotation) and simply enjoy the tilt.

This stately effort manages to be too big, and not nearly big enough.