Titanic 3D: Kate and Leo's love story still worth seeing on big screen

The 3D gimmick adds absolutely nothing to this picture, but it is still what it is: a very solid and enjoyable film with great casting.

James Cameron's Titanic 3D.
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Titanic 3D
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane
***

So what if Titanic is in 3D? Surely this ship already sailed 15 years ago, laughing all the way to the bank with, at the time, a record-breaking US$1.8 billion (Dh6.6bn) in box-office receipts. The director Cameron broke his own money record with Avatar, a film that cemented the arrival of 3D, and then proclaimed that, had the technology been available, he would have made Titanic in 3D. Cameron seems to be going the way of George Lucas, in that he can't leave well enough alone. 3D adds absolutely nothing to this picture.

It is still what it is: a very solid and enjoyable film with great casting. DiCaprio excels as the dreamy pauper who falls in love with the frustrated rich girl. The curvaceous Winslet was easy to sympathise and side with as she rebelled against her mother and tried to escape from her fiancé, the conniving and devil-eyed Zane. But no amount of 3D can hide the corny dialogue or tug at the heart strings as much as a tale of two young lovers in the first buds of spring.

The only place where the 3D improves the action is in the present-day opening sequence when the treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) sends cameras into the underwater wreck attempting to find the priceless necklace The Heart of the Ocean. For those who didn't contribute to Cameron's mansion the first time around, Titanic remains a spectacle worth seeing on the big screen, with or without those tinted glasses.