Sick Product of a Sick System

Excellent but underrated film

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

There definitely are some dead spots. Too much time is spent looking for the ship. The three sided romance goes nowhere and could have been deleted. The entire operation of simply pumping foam, attaching gas bags, and exploding the Titanic off the bottom throws credibility out the window. Nevertheless, Richard Jordan and Jason Robards give it their best, despite minimal character development. The real star however is the Titanic model, which of course doesn't appear until past the half way point of the film. If you persevere until then, your imagination will be rewarded. Definitely watchable if you have enough patience. - MERK

Raise the Titanic (1980) * 1/2 (out of 4) The U.S. Government is looking for a rare mineral that has gone missing decades earlier and they begin to fear that it might have fallen into the hands of the Russians. After some evidence turns up they realize that the mineral was placed on the Titanic and of course sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic. However, a scientist comes up with a plan to raise the Titanic and get the mineral off. RAISE THE TITANIC is based on an apparently highly regarded novel but whatever was working there certainly didn't carry over to the film as its considered one of the biggest flops in the history of cinema. The idea of raising the Titanic is something rather interesting but it seems as if the producers, writers and director all went into a room and decided to take this interesting story and do it in such a way that nothing would work. The entire Cold War stuff is just downright silly, there's a dumb love story thrown in and we get countless dramatic moments that contain zero drama. For a thriller I really can't think of too many other films with such few thrills. One of the biggest problems is the actual screenplay because it spends way too much time building up to the event. As with many "disaster" pictures from this era, we get about an hour of talk before we get down to any action but the problem here is that this first hour is just so dry and boring that you really begin to lose interest in them raising the ship. Once this does take place you somewhat have to laugh at how they plan on bringing the ship back to life so to speak. The special effects are less than impressive and of course you also have to put up with several factual errors that couldn't really be avoided since the real ship wasn't discovered for another five years. The performances are all pretty much as bland as the screenplay and the director doesn't do much to bring any life either. RAISE THE TITANIC could have been a good popcorn movie but in the end its just a flat mess that has nothing going for it.

My view of this movie is colored by the fact that I read the book first. It was my second Clive Clussler novel, and I went on to read almost all of them. When I saw the ad for this movie, I was so excited.Then I watched it. What a huge, huge disappointment. Whoever wrote the script should be shot. Sorry, I shouldn't encourage violence like that. The writer of this script should be chained to a chair and forced to watch this movie in a continuous loop for a year.It is a god awful film, in a world of bad movies. The story made no sense, and they completely cut out the most exciting parts of the book. It makes me wonder, did the idiot who wrote this purposely leave these parts out? Did he have a beef with the studio and purposely do this to make the movie tank? I can't believe this movie actually made a little money. I haven't seen it on TV for many, many years. It's so bad that cable movie channels won't even run it at midnight.The highlight of the book was when the hero Dirk Pitt faces down a team of Soviet agents trying to take ownership of the newly raised Titanic, in the middle of a hurricane. For the movie, they reduced this entire conflict down to the Soviet showing up at the dock and trying to claim the ship as property of the USSR, and being told no.I came away believing that Cussler sold out on this movie, took the money and turned his back on it. I know if I could have stood by and watch them mutilate the book like this.For 31 years, anytime some asks what's the worse movie I've ever seen, this is always the first title that pops to mind. I might need to watch it again so I can laugh at how bad it is.

Talk about sabotaging a bestseller! This Cold War Era thriller about a massive effort to raise the legendary Titanic was a complete botch. If you haven't read Clive Cussler's imaginative, but right-wing thriller about a gigantic defense shield that will protect America, then you might enjoy this soggy saga. Long, boring, with few action interludes of any cinematic significance, "Raise the Titanic" is a complete waste of time. Richard Jordan isn't a very charismatic Dirk Pitt and the word is that the failure of this mega-budget movie sank Cussler's Dirk Pitt franchise until "Sahara" came along to revive it. They are raising the Titanic because it may have hidden in its waterly bowels the secret element to make a defense shield feasible. The ending truly sucks. It appears as if the liberals got their hands on this movie. We don't get the defense shield in the movie because that would make us villainous! The two decent moments in this dreary adventure are the opening scenes set to John Barry's unforgettable theme music that recounts the construction and voyage of the Titanic. Later, Alec Guiness gets to put the old flag on the cruise ship after it is raised. Avoid this debacle!