Chicago Tribune
Wednesday August 6, 1980

Tempo

Shallow plot, disastrous effects sink boring 'Raise The Titanic'

By Larry Kart

While it certainly is not worth the price of admission -- and should someone give you a ticket to "Raise the Titanic."  I'd think twice about attending -- there is one scene in this otherwise interminable mess that is unintentionally hilarious.

     For reasons we'll get to in a moment, a United States Navy salvage team is trying to bring to the surface the fabled RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912, after striking an iceberg.  Elaborate flotation devices are in place, explosive charges have been set off to break the ship free from the suction off the ocean floor, and slowly the Titanic begins to rise.

     But as the ship angles ever more sharply upward, it starts to pick up speed, until finally the Titanic is racing toward the surface like an otter on amphetamines.  So absurd is the kinetic "whoosh" of this scramble to the top that one waits eagerly for its outcome -- who knows, perhaps the Titanic, rather then riding the waves, will shoot into the stratosphere and embed its bow in an orbiting Soviet space station.

     UNFORTUNATELY, nothing is improbable occurs, although the plot of "Raise the Titanic" certainly is dumb enough to have allowed for such a development.

     It seems that our government have come up with a laser protection screen that will make the United States invulnerable to nuclear attack.  The only problem is that the system calls for "an independent power source" that utilizes "byzanium," a mineral whose total world supply is, you guessed it, in the hold of the Titanic, 20,000 feet below the surface.

     But American ingenuity balks at no task, especially when the man in charge is one Dirk Pitt -- an indefatigable adventurer played with such beefy stiffness by Richard Jordan that one imagines he anxiously is awaiting the arrival of the rest of the Pitt family, Bear and Arm.

     The plot, such as it is, unravels with mind boggling ineptitude under the guidance of director Jerry Jameson, as scenes that do nothing to advance the story line are lingered over interminably while action sequences that promise a few cheap thrills are abandoned almost before they get started.

     MOST DISAPPOINTINGLY the special effects are a disaster -- if only because, for three-quarters of the film, the Titanic is at the bottom of a very murky ocean, where it looks something like a slime-encrusted jungle gym.

     And believe it or not, when Pitt and the rest of the bozos involved in this project finally raise the Titanic and haul her into New York harbor -- the process shots are terrible -- they find that the byzanium isn't there after all.

     Now, according to the code of movie reviewing, I suppose that particular development should not have been revealed.  But surely any viewers who have remained awake to this point in the film won't care a whit about byzanium or anything else, other than how much longer this cinematic bilge is going to flow.

     It would be difficult to say that "Raise the Titanic" is the worst movie ever made -- competition is fierce at that level, as films of aggressive awfulness jostle against works of sublime boredom.  But never before have I seen a movie that made me doubt the basic wisdom of projecting images on a screen, unless the idea here was to develop a celluloid substitute for Sominex.

Gene Siskel is on vacation.