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If, somehow, the three and a quarter hours of on-ship intrigue and spectacular suffering of James Cameron's Oscar-winning Titanic wasn't enough for you, here's a TV movie that treads much the same water, though without the bombast of Cameron's epic. S.O.S. Titanic boasts a good-by-TV-standards cast--David Janssen, Susan St. James, Cloris Leachman, David Warner (who booked passage a second time, in Cameron's version), and early appearances by such esteemed performers as Ian Holm and Helen Mirren. It follows the voyage of the ship in a day-by-day diary through the eyes of a number of the passengers and crew members until the fateful night, then provides a brief denouement as the survivors come to terms with what has happened to them. A number of budding romances are explored in this film, suggesting the Titanic was the original Love Boat. Janssen, in a subplot quaint by today's standards, plays a wealthy man who has become something of a pariah because he has divorced and remarried a younger woman. Warner and St. James play prim academics who awkwardly stumble into a friendship; it's intriguing until their final scene together, in which they serve as an ersatz Greek chorus ludicrously commenting on the outcome. There are relationships burgeoning down in steerage, as well, where the hearty poor Irish kick up a party atmosphere just as they did, again, in Cameron's version. Leachman chews scenery as the Unsinkable Molly Brown; Holm (with a more youthful voice that sounds as if the soundtrack is being played too fast) is the callous owner of the ship, and Mirren is an Irish maid observing key moments in the saga.
The melodrama here isn't as purple as in Cameron's film, and the sundry relationships are built and connected intelligently. More impressively, a lot of the mayhem behind the sinking is nearly as effective as the celebrated megaflick on a fraction of the budget. The best news is, it's a full 90 minutes shorter than Cameron's film. --David Kronke
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