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Chris Rock, left, and Tom Lennon in What to Expect When You're Expecting. (MELISSA MOSELEY / LIONSGATE)

Titanic 3D

THE 3D effects added to James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster are mostly gratuitous.

Cameron is merely giving us an excuse to repackage his blockbuster upon the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking, first with a theatrical re-release and now with this fourdisc Blu-ray extravaganza, which comes with two new docs.

One is titled Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron.

We’re taking you at your word, big guy.

As far as the 3D is concerned, you may only be arrested by the illusion of depth a couple of times. One example is a bleak yet stunning shot of a woman floating dead in the flooded grand staircase, her gown rippling like some glamorous wraith. You may also expect a touch of vertigo during the scene in which our protagonists Jack and Rose (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) cling to the ship’s stern as it rises perpendicular to the water just before it sinks.

Otherwise, you’ll simply forget you’re watching 3D: this is the same movie that won the best picture Oscar in 1998.

That movie is still an overwrought melodrama, but Titanic still succeeds on many levels. Seen today, it seems even more timely in the way it frames the 1912 maritime disaster as a kind of class struggle. At the forefront, the penniless hero Jack Dawson finds himself drawn to Kate Winslet’s Rose, a girl from a "good family" betrothed to Billy Zane’s contemptible Cal. Their star-crossed romance plays out against the divide between the luxurious first-class passengers and the poor folk in steerage, the same group who find themselves locked behind iron gates while the posh folk are filling up the lifeboats.

If that’s not a timely portrayal of the one per center, I don’t know what is.

This deluxe edition also includes 30 deleted scenes, 60 (?!) behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a digital copy. ★★★★

What To Expect When You’re Expecting

THIS serio-comic adaptation of Heidi Murkoff’s non-fiction pregnancy guide by Brit director Kirk Jones offers pure ingratiating sentiment in its multi-faceted view of "expecting."

How plebeian is this movie’s approach?

Put it this way: Three of its 10 significant characters are reality TV stars. Among the preggers and pregger wannabes:

• Cameron Diaz is Jules, a TV fitness guru who crosses over to a Dancing with the Stars­ type show and indulges in a little horizontal mambo with her professional dance partner Evan (Matthew Morrison), only to discover she’s with child during the competition.
• Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) is a breastfeeding advocate who hasn’t actually had a child herself. (How does that happen, exactly?) When she finally does get pregnant by her eternally supportive husband Gary (Tom Falcone), her idealized view of mothering comes crashing down amid the reality of mood swings, bloating, uncontrollable flatulence and "backne."
• Jennifer Lopez, she of the child-bearing hips, plays Holly, a child photographer who desperately wants but cannot have children of her own. She and her somewhat reluctant husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) decide to adopt a baby, a process that becomes fraught with tension when she loses her job.

Of all the cast, Banks actually provides the film with its sparse moments of amusement. For the rest, the movie just piles on the melodrama and the tired comedy tropes. What to Expect When You’re Expecting is an example of a Hollywood movie attempting to pretend familiarity with the movie-going public, playing up the common experience of first-time parenting. But the end product is so manipulative and false, it’s grimly alienating. ★½

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca