Titanic II (2010)

In 2012, the 100th anniversary of the disaster of the original Titanic, the Titanic II sets sail from New York to Southampton, UK to recreate the historic voyage - minus the sinking, they hope.  Meanwhile, a really big iceberg starts breaking apart, and a really, really big piece causes massive tsunamis - which push an ice field (and a lot of waves) towards the mid-Atlantic...right in the path of Titanic II!  Can the people aboard the poorly-thought out named ship avoid the disaster that occurred 100 years ago?

Spoilers, ho!

In a word, no.  The Titanic II sinks, albeit for different reasons other than hubris.  The first wave of icebergs take a huge chunk out of the boat, which was designed to withstand a head-on collision with icebergs; the designers didn't anticipate being hit on the side (somewhat ironically, had the original Titanic hit the fateful iceberg head-on, researches believe the damage would have been much more contained and it likely wouldn't have sunk).  The ship quickly begins to list, and - oh boy, if you liked Alanis Morissette's famous song, you'll love this movie - even though it was equipped with enough lifeboats for everyone, only half can be used due to the damage on the starboard side.  As you might imagine, chaos ensues.



I'm Coming for you, Titanic II!



The funny part about this movie is that it's not really all about the voyage of the Titanic II.  On the contrary, this is actually on par with The Day After Tomorrow.  Dennis Quaid would fit in perfectly in this movie in the place of Bruce Davison (who was, incidentally, the best actor in the film).  In fact, Titanic II could just have well been any boat at all with the same results - it's just more fun this way because the irony just drips off the script.

The only disappointing part was that we didn't get to see much of the new Titanic II.  I realize that's because this is a film by The Asylum, a film production company that makes its living by crafting low-budget, straight-to-DVD films that capitalize on other movies with similar titles and themes, but it would have been neat to see more of the ship.  What we do see makes a lot of sense: 2012 luxuries on an ocean liner, what looks like a giant shopping mall in the middle of the ship, and so forth.  You can definitely tell the budget was a little low, but the story doesn't suffer thankfully.

Overall, it's definitely worth watching, but only as an introduction to movies from The Asylum.  It's the first that I've seen, hopefully of many.  I watched Titanic II via Netflix.