Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		1.5
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

The Titanic: The Epic Mini-Series Event Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 12, 2016

Disaster is unthinkable.

It's an inescapable fact, for better or for worse, that any movie ever made about the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic -- the luxury liner that struck ice and subsequently sunk, killing many more than survived the incident -- will be compared, one way or another, to James Cameron's epic 1997 film that won many Oscars and won the hearts of moviegoers the world over. This miniseries, churned out for CBS in 1996 -- a year before Cameron's opus hit theaters -- is remarkably similar. Most of that is because a true story is a true story. This miniseries stays fairly true to the tale, and it often plays out as simply a much lower budget version of the big boy in the room. So it's comfortable and familiar, if nothing else, a curious compliment to the 1997 film and interesting to see another filmmaker's take on the classic tale of tragedy.

Sailing to history.

The Titanic, the most impressive vessel ever built, is set to sail from England to New York City. It's Captain Smith's (George C. Scott) final sail before retirement. Ship's designer Bruce Ismay (Roger Rees) is eager to stretch Titanic's legs and see her power to New York ahead of schedule. Skipper is against the idea, but Rees secretly orders the ship to high speed, anyway. On the boat, a married woman named Isabella Paradine (Catherine Zeta-Jones) begins an affair with Wynn Park (Peter Gallagher) and decides to leave her family behind for him. A common thief named Jamie Perse (Mike Doyle) falls for a young lady from steerage named Aase Ludvigsen (Sonsee Ahray) while secretly working in cahoots with a ship's employee named Simon Doonan (Tim Curry) on a plot to separate the first-class passengers from their riches. A woman named Alice Cleaver (Felicity Waterman) isn't who she claims to be. And, of course, the famous Molly Brown (Marilu Henner) loudly chats up anyone who will listen. As the ship sails towards destination and destiny, fate sets in motion other plans for the vessel.

It's uncanny how similar this Titanic is to that Titanic, but they're similar in faithfulness to the story, obviously, with one difference being that this TV miniseries sees the story on to a more logical conclusion, with survivors rescued, brought and huddled aboard a ship that's sped through the night to the place of the Titanic's demise, and taken the survivors on the rest of their voyage to New York City. The aftermath on that ship, where widows mourn, confusion reigns, survivor's guilt hangs over it all, is the movie's best sequence. Otherwise, the two films share much the same structure, with lengthy introductions of key characters on land and aboard the ship followed by the crash and the chaos and confusion in the aftermath. Production design is quite good; the ship looks fine, not quite so naturally resplendent and finely detailed as that seen in Cameron's film, but given that this Titanic was made for a small fraction of the budget, the locations -- limited, mostly, as they may be -- are impressively constructed.

The film is rather laborious to start. It takes an hour so for it to settle in. Character introductions tend to meander, but the closer the movie comes to its disaster, the more it seems to settle into its comfort zone. It's hardly compelling stuff at the core. There's no mystery, and with the film's close ties to historical accuracy, there's not even much variety in core details or concepts. But that doesn't stop the viewer from hoping against hope that she'll somehow steer clear of that ice, maybe scuff her paint, rattle the souls aboard, spill a few trinkets onto the floors inside, and continue on her way to New York no worse for wear. The sense of hopelessness as the ship sinks and passengers remain on board and the frustration with lifeboats floating away barely half full, if that, are both very tangible. The film captures enough essential human drama to keep it afloat as the unsinkable vessel sinks, as people face their fates not in graphic manner but with an underscored gloom that gradually grows over the ill-fated ship and the possibility of death becomes unmistakable and imminent reality.

The film boasts a fine cast -- including an early career performance from Barry Pepper -- but performances are lacking on many accounts. There's little sense of camaraderie between the players in the early stages, and the latter half of the movie never feels fully alive. The movie's sentiments are made more by the known quantities and the expression of basic human emotion in the audience. There's confusion and anger and grief and doubt and fear in the actors' faces, but they don't quite sell it as well one would expect. Part of that may be the lack of technical polish, the special effects that are more unflattering than they are fundamentally supportive. Whatever the case may be, the cast feels replaceable and the characters not particularly well developed, even with all the time the movie spends with them, particularly before disaster strikes.

The Titanic: The Epic Mini-Series Event Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mill Creek has packed the entire two-part film, which runs nearly three hours, onto one 25GB disc, albeit one without a complex soundtrack, or soundtracks, for that matter, subtitle options, or bonus content. Nevertheless, The Titanic: The Complete Mini-Series Event plays with a bitrate that fluctuates throughout the low-to-mid teens, so to say its been unceremoniously crammed onto the disc would be something of an understatement. In any event, the 1.78:1 image -- not the original 4x3 broadcast, though it looks quite natural in its current ratio -- enjoys a few fleeting moments of passable visuals but more often than not succumbs to seriously spiky, snowy grain and noise that dominates the experience. Black levels fluctuate between crush and excessive paleness, usually the latter. Details never excite. The image is mildly soft and hardly finely textured, leaving it looking more like a DVD than a Blu-ray. Colors are likewise pale and lacking even a hint of brilliance, even in the most resplendent, best-lit locations, like the dining area. Pops and speckles and other signs of print wear are evident throughout. Poorly assembled green screen shots and other visuals that appear to have been processed on standard definition video are particularly poor, but the basic filmed elements are a true letdown for a movie with much more promise for quality Blu-ray video.

The Titanic: The Epic Mini-Series Event Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Titanic: The Complete Mini-Series Event sails onto Blu-ray with a meager, but baseline effective, Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film's Emmy-winning sound mixing isn't given a fair shake. The two-channel track is limiting, but even within those limitations clarity and detail suffer. Music spreads well enough out to the sides, not very far and not very clearly but with enough muscle and definition to skirt by. Little atmospheric effects stretch a tad further, sometimes. While hardly immersive, a few scenes open up nicely enough with complimentary sound, like chatter in a bar or chaos on the deck. Most of the action effects fall flat. The crash into the ice, creaks, moans, rattles, hissing steam, flooding waters, none of it really rises to any sort of agreeable standard for sound reproduction, coming across as more mushy than anything else. Dialogue mostly sounds fine, satisfyingly clear and detailed, though it sometimes struggles to remain maneuvered directly to the middle; it doesn't push to the sides, but imaging could certainly use a little fine-tuning as it drifts a bit off-center.

The Titanic: The Epic Mini-Series Event Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are included with this Blu-ray release of The Titanic: The Complete Mini-Series Event. The top menu offers only the options to watch parts one (1:27:12 total runtime) and two (1:26:12 total runtime). No "play all" option is available. No in-film pop-up menu is included.

The Titanic: The Epic Mini-Series Event Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This Titanic isn't a bad little film. Characters are poorly written and executed, but production design is fine, if not obviously, and understandably, much more modest than the Cameron epic. The film's emotional draw is less created and nurtured and more a result of basic human sympathy in the audience. Still, it's a fair watch for those who wish to see the disaster unfold from a slightly different set of perspectives, on camera and off. The Titanic: The Complete Mini-Series Event features unattractive video and shaky audio. No extras are included. Even Mrs. Liebman thought the technical presentation was poor, and she's not one to care all that much about such things. Her advice: skip it; the video presentation renders it nearly unwatchable, for the most part.