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.
