Titanic: The Legend Goes On



""You know there's something you should know, so I'm gonna tell you so! Don't sweat it! Forget it! Enjoy the show!""

- Fritz, opening the "Party Time" number

Titanic: The Legend Goes On -- also known as Titanic: The Animated Movie or Titanic: The Animated Musical -- is an animated film written and directed by Italian director Camillo Teti. The film follows the adventures of a Cinderella Captain Ersatz named Angelica, who boards the Titanic with her wicked stepmother and her stepsisters. In a role-reversal of the romance from the better known James Cameron film, the poor girl falls in love with a rich young man (whose nanny happens to be Angelica's long-lost real mother).

Accompanying them on the voyage are a family of immigrant mice, a Cruella de Vil lookalike and her Cockney henchmen, a detective who dresses like Sherlock Holmes, a trio of Mexican mice, and a rapping dog. You will not be able to follow what they're doing or why they're doing it. Then again, you probably wouldn't want to.

The ship eventually hits an iceberg and sinks, of course -- but in this Lighter and Softer fairy tale treatment of the Titanic story, nearly all of the characters we're introduced to in this film survive the disaster and live Happily Ever After.

Cameron's Titanic was based on an actual tragic event where well over 1,500 people died. Some reviewers wonder if Camillo Teti knew this, or whether he thought the Titanic legend was just that and decided to do a Lighter and Softer animated imitation of the Cameron film with a whole bunch of talking cartoon animals for (alleged) comic relief.

Since it's hard to find copies of this film, many people don't even believe this film exists. The people who have seen it don't want to believe it exists. When watched with other people, it becomes So Bad It's Good and is a perfect subject for riffing -- a good party movie, if you will.

There are two versions of the film: the original cut, and a lesser-known cut which features completely different songs, two times the repeated dialogue, three times the Stock Sound Effects, three times the MIDI background music, and (shockingly) a much more coherent plot than the original cut. The latter version was bundled free with some cheap DVD player bundles in the early days of DVD technology. Mutant Reviewers From Hell has more information about the two versions.

By the way, here's the plot description from the back of the video box: ""Set aboard the famous ship Titanic, where you will meet many lovable characters as they embark on a fun-filled adventure across the sea! Meet Angelica a young, beautiful girl who dreams of meeting her prince charming (sic). Sir William Greenfield a rich and handsome yet shy and modest Scottish nobleman. Corynthia Meanstreak an able swindler who is aided by her two clumsy nephews Kirk and Dirk. And of course we can't forget all the lovable Animals (sic) who populate the Titanic and will tell their own stories. Maxie the mouse, Geoffrey the cat, Danny the Dalmatian, Hector the Magpie and more!! Together these characters conjure up delightful entertainment for kids of all ages!

"As it happened in the real story, the Titanic will hit the iceberg but only to determine the beginning of a new life full of hope for everybody!! Filled with hilarious antics, fun music and enchanting characters this movie is sure to be a hit with the entire family !"''"

Compare The Magic Voyage, another disastrous animated film Very Loosely Based on a True Story.

Not to be confused with the other Titanic musical, which has a well-written score and is about the actual people who were on the ship.

Nor should it be confused with another Italian film called The Legend of the Titanic, which is an entirely different animated ripoff of Titanic that features more talking mice and a giant octopus which saves the ship.

Tropes featured in this film include:
"Molly: I'm always a perfect lady with nothing to be ashamed of, so leave me alone.
 * All There in the Manual: The names of a lot of the characters are only given on the back of the DVD.
 * Aluminium Christmas Trees: May have been one for the producers of this film. The Titanic was real, guys!
 * Anachronism Stew: The rapping dog. Just... the rapping dog...
 * Award Bait Song: Like the movie it's ripping off, it attempts to have a soulful love ballad, even played over the requisite ballroom scene.
 * Broken Record: In uncut version, some lines indeed sound like a broken record. Some sentences seem to somehow start mid-word and out of nowhere.
 * "Can't go through this way. Don't force me to resort to violence! You can't go through this way. Don't force me to resort to violence! Don't force me to resort to violence. Can't go through this way."

Molly: (several lines later) Oh thank you! Always a perfect lady with nothing to be ashamed of!"


 * "WE'RE ON A SHIP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN!"
 * Ripoff Plagiarism Captain Ersatz: Most of the cast are imitations of characters from well-known animated films. Angelica, her stepmother, and her stepsisters are obvious Cinderella knockoffs and Angelica herself has been compared to Don Bluth's Anastasia. The mouse family are clearly derivative of An American Tail. The two dalmatians look a lot like Pongo and Perdita from Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and of course there's a Cruella de Vil lookalike with henchmen who resemble Jasper and Horace. The Mexican mice look like refugees from a Speedy Gonzalez cartoon, a magpie is quite obviously based on Jeremy from The Secret of NIMH, and there's bumbling detective who looks like Sherlock Holmes. There's even a ripoff of Disney's version Gaston called…Gaston.
 * Somewhat less obvious are the Lady knock-off from Lady and the Tramp (except that the "Lady" is actually male with a Sam Elliot-like voice), Granny from Sylvester and Tweety (called "Victoria"), the orange cat Geoffrey who looks quite a bit like Azrael of The Smurfs, Fritz the rapping terrier (who looks very much like Jock, the terrier in Lady and the Tramp), the geese from The Aristocats, and (a bit more obscure) William looks quite a bit like Prince Charming of Cinderella (and his picture on the DVD looks eerily like Leonardo Dicaprio's character in the James Cameron Titanic). And to top it all off, they couldn't resist admitting in script that the chihuahua accompanying the cat was based off of Batty from Ferngully. ("Stupid dog! What am I saying? You look more like a bat!")
 * Notice how some characters seem to have better animation than others? This is because the animators just traced over characters in other animated movies. That's also why the character designs vary wildly in style.
 * Captain Obvious: In the uncut version, when the ship is sinking: "We're on a ship in the middle of the ocean".
 * More of laziness from the film makers. That same line was used earlier, when the Nanny points out to William that the girl he is looking for can't just disappear as "We're on a ship in the middle of the ocean!"
 * Could be an attempt at an Ironic Echo, if it weren't such a terrible line.
 * Catch Phrase: "Sam to my friends, a threat to my enemies."
 * Circling Birdies: When Meanstreak's dog gets hit by a meat and flew against the wall, he gets some meat spinning on top of its head.
 * Conspicuous CG: The long-distance shots of the ship during the voyage.
 * Cross-Dressing Voices: "You had a tiger on board?" What's worse is before that line is said, the same character had a female voice.
 * Also Maxie the mouse child is voiced by one Caroline Yung.
 * Cats Are Mean: Jeffrey.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: Repeated dialogue in uncut version.
 * Also this gem from the uncut version: "Dressed in mourning, Gertrude Pickering is all broken up, though her tears are not tears of joy." 'Ya think?
 * The Door Slams You: Happens during medallion retrieval scene.
 * Dueling Movies: There was another animated Titanic movie released in Italy around the same time as this one, The Legend of the Titanic which had even more focus on mice on the ship and had a giant octopus save the ship from sinking. That's right, even more historical inaccuracy!
 * Eek! a Mouse!: Played straight.
 * Everybody Lives: Despite being a movie about an event where over 1500 people died... the only character who is actually stated to have not made it off the boat is the singer (with the big tits) and all because she was too busy singing. Everyone else though? Oh they all live happily ever after, with no life altering psychological damage at all.
 * It's also implied that the gold digger Winnie and Jeremy McFlannel die as well. They are last seen on the boat, willing to stay with each other to the end, and aren't mentioned in the epilogue.
 * Funnily enough, the part about the singer dying on Titanic due to being busy singing may in fact be some sort of reference to how the orchestra decided to stay behind on the ship and play one last tune of "Nearer My God To Thee". No word on whether attractive singers were part of the group, though.
 * Fan Disservice: The stepsisters in their underpants.
 * Four Lines, All Waiting: We've got the thieves, the love story, the detective, the mice, the bankrupt banker and the search for the mother. Oh, and the boat thing.
 * Dubiously justified in that the movie makers seemed to want to concentrate more on the lives of the passengers, taking it for granted that the viewers would already know about the iceberg thing.
 * Frying Pan of Doom: Ship's chef attempts to use one, but fails.
 * Funny Animal: The mice.
 * GASP: Angelica on a boat.
 * Gorgeous Period Dress: Probably the one part of the movie that comes close to accurate, aside from the setting. All the fancy hats, expensive dresses, and fur wraps, were at least mostly done right.
 * Except for the singer's gown, a strapless, backless number that looks more suitable for a modern cruise ship than anything from a century ago.
 * Oh, and don't forget about the rapping dog, in a jersey and baseball cap.
 * Gratuitous Rap: The rapping dog.
 * Happily Ever After: If there was ever a film where a Happily Ever After ending could be considered a problem, it's this.
 * Heroes Want Redheads: And how. After roughly five seconds upon first meeting as well. It takes roughly 15-20 before he starts smoothing her hand.
 * Heroic Dolphin: The dolphins who help save people from the sinking ship
 * I Was Quite a Looker: Victoria claims to be this, explaining why she'd have a party dress in Angelica's size. We never actually see evidence of this, though.
 * And of course this brings up some major Fridge Logic: why would Victoria, who looks to be quite elderly, have a dress from her youth (presumably the 1880s) that's very much in keeping with 1912 styles?
 * Kick the Dog: One of the wicked stepsisters intentionally drops a cup and the stepmother orders the young heroine to clean it up, calling her "clumsy" in the process.
 * Large Ham: The voice actress who does the voice of Meanstreak when she goes "IT'S A FAAAAKE!"
 * Lighter and Softer: There are times when Lighter and Softer actually works, and then there's this.
 * Limited Animation: In fact, the animation has been compared to the horrible Legend Of Zelda CD-I games.
 * Lip Lock: The English dub is rather poor.
 * Love At First Sight: One of the most extreme examples.
 * Male Gaze: Oh yes, that's a very pretty necklace you're wearing ma'am. Oh, nice tits too.
 * Misplaced Wildlife: Dolphins in the north Atlantic? Really?
 * While certain species of dolphins, including the bottlenose, have a range that spans virtually the entire Atlantic, there are no reports of dolphins arriving after the sinking.
 * No Fourth Wall: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, where are you going? The movie isn't over yet!"
 * The rapping dog's "Don't sweat it! Forget it! Enjoy the show!"
 * Not Even Bothering with the Accent: You wouldn't know William was Scottish unless you read the back of the box.
 * Not-So-Innocent Whistle: Hector does that when he first shows up.
 * Off-Model: Uncut version has more of it. For an example, Gaston going through a table at one point. Although in both versions, you can see a man in one background growing larger or Meanstreak receiving an extra hand with a wallet for a second.
 * Parental Abandonment: At the start of the film Angelica is in the care of her stepmother, the only explanation given about her biological parents is that they left her behind as a small child and then seemingly disappeared. Conveniently Angelica's mother just happens to be on the Titanic, the caretaker to the male love interest (who by the way has no parents to speak of either), and ends up the same lifeboat as her long lost daughter. When the pair reunite all that is revealed is Angelica's parents were forced to give her up for ungiven reasons and in the uncut version that her parents were allowed to return for Angelica at any time but when they did so the girl's caretaker (the stepmother) had taken off leaving only a bank account for money that they were likely sending to her behind.
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Sam Bradbury has to be the worst undercover detective ever to live. The fact that he managed to get an award for solving a crime he did bugger-all to solve at the end of the movie is baffling. There's even an instance where a woman's valuables have disappeared (or more likely stolen) and he pops up saying "Not to worry, I saw everything." Oh really? Then why the hell didn't you SAY WHAT HAPPENED?!
 * There's also the fact that he clearly sees the two thieves reaching into the gold digger's purse at one point and seems to freak out for no good reason when they start to put their hand in the dog's mouth instead. Wouldn't that have been reason enough to catch them? On the other hand, this might also apply to the Captain, who was told he had a ring of notorious thieves on his boat and didn't do a thing to help catch them. No warnings to the passengers, no extra security, no worrying, nothing.
 * Spaghetti Kiss: Sort of. We see the Dalmatians sharing link sausage in the "Mucho Gusto" scene. We don't actually see them kiss, but it's pretty obvious it was meant to invoke this trope.
 * There's a good chance that they didn't know how to animate dogs kissing, so they just gave up.
 * She Cleans Up Nicely: Or sort of nicely.
 * Stock Footage: The edited version is especially guilty for this. In fact, a large part of the footage in that version is shown at least twice. In one scene, there's water breaking through the hull shown 4 times straight!
 * At least the Hitler Building never shows up...
 * That Reminds Me of a Song: The aforementioned rapping dog song "Party Time" and the Mexican mice's "Mucho Gusto."
 * Those Two Guys: The thieves were evidently meant to be this.
 * Totally Radical: The rapping dog.
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Anthropomorphic animals, to passengers.
 * Also in the Italian version, which is even more blatant.
 * Uptown Girl: Gender-flipped. Angelica, being a poor girl, felt herself unfit to be in a relationship with wealthy William. She even told him she didn't belong into his world and couldn't compete with the young ladies that surrounded him.
 * Very Loosely Based on a True Story: and we do mean very.
 * Viewers Are Goldfish: Yes, thank you movie; we already know what happened less than three minutes ago.
 * Vocal Dissonance: You'd expect the Dopey-esque bellhop to have a silly-sounding voice, but no. He speaks with a perfectly normal-sounding one instead.
 * What the Hell Is That Accent?: The littlest mouse. Supposedly meant to be Swedish.
 * Where Are They Now? Epilogue: Lampshaded by the youngest of the mouse family at the very end of the film.
 * Wicked Stepmother: Gertrude. Although she's technically Angelica's adopted mother, she plays the role of a stepmother.
 * You Are Worth Hell: In the full uncut version, there's a scene as the ship is sinking where the old man and the fat lady reveal that they were both lying, and have nothing of value. The woman then embraces the man saying how at least she has him. It's the closest thing to an actual emotional scene in the movie.