Made on a mega-budget ($200million); taking a record $1.5billion world-wide; showered with 11 Oscars (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography and Best Score), Titanic is some big movie.

And the ship looks stunningly luxurious (an Oscar for Art Direction), as do the costumes (Oscar-winning).

But it's the 100-odd minutes of melodrama you have to wade through until the ship hits the iceberg that's the problem.

Leonardo DiCaprio is young Jack Dawson, travelling steerage class; Kate Winslet (deservedly Oscar-nominated) is Rose, the rebellious daughter of a wealthy American family engaged to snobbish Cal (Billy Zane).

Naturally fate brings Rose and Jack together (we've all seen the poster).

The story is a flashback from the framing tale told by elderly Titanic survivor Rose (Gloria Stuart) to the diving crew exploring the liner's remains on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the camera roaming round the encrusted wreck provides some haunting moments.

The sinking is truly spectacular - and so it should be with the wealth of computerised effects and the army of stuntmen that were chucked at it.

And the eerie sight of the flotsam (and bodies) spreading out once the ship has disappeared is one of the most effective sequences.

A shame, then, that writer/director James Cameron chooses to spend so much time on such a banal (and unbelievable) love story. A Night to Remember this is not.