Western Animation / Titanic: The Legend Goes On

Because it's common knowledge that the Titanic was just a "legend". And that there was a rapping dog on board.

"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 a 2000 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 thieving magpie, a Cruella de Vil lookalike and her Cockney henchmen, a detective who dresses like Sherlock Holmes, a trio of Mexican mice, and an anachronistic rapping dog. You will not be able to follow what they're doing or why they're doing it.

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.

There are two versions of the film: the original cut, and a more well-known Re-Cut which features completely different songs and a 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.

Not to be confused with the other Titanic musical, which 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 Titanic movie with talking mice and a plot where nearly everyone survives the Titanic sinking.

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Titanic: The Legend Goes On proves examples of the following tropes:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The long-distance shots of the ship during the voyage are clearly computer generated, clashing with the normal 2-D animation.
• Actor Allusion: Edmund Purdom, who voices Jeremy McFlannel, had a small role in Titanic (1953).
• Advertised Extra: Most of the characters listed on the DVD are minor animals who only appear in the background of a few shots.
• All There in the Script: The names of a lot of the characters are only given on the back of the DVD.
• Anachronism Stew: Fritz the dog isn't only rapping in 1912, he also at one point carries a vintage wireless telegraph machine around like a boombox and wears a basketball jersey with a "T" (for Titanic) on it.
• Animation Bump: The scene in which Victoria gives Angelica her dress is probably the only scene in the movie where the animation is actually decent.
• Artistic License – History: In spades. The rapping dog is just the tip of the iceberg.
• 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.
• Bittersweet Ending: The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue indicates that most of the main cast are living happy lives, Angelica and William in particular getting married. That being said, 1,500 people still died tragically.
• Broken Record: In the uncut version, some lines indeed sound like a broken record. Some sentences seem to somehow start mid-word and out of nowhere.
  • "You 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: I'm always a perfect lady with nothing to be ashamed of, so leave me alone.
  (several lines later)
  Molly: Oh thank you! Always a perfect lady with nothing to be ashamed of!
  • "The locket that her long-lost mother gave her." Said in two different scenes using the exact same audio footage.
  • "WE'RE ON A SHIP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN!"
  • "Out of the picture, she's/you're about to present me with some heirs."
  • "You can't come - You can't come, you have nothing to wear - nothing to wear, and no one's going - and no one's going to lend you anything."
• Canine Confusion: One of the dogs sheds a single tear after seeing the Titanic sink with his human still on board. Though keep in mind, this is the same movie where a different dog suddenly becomes bipedal, starts rapping, and wears hip-hop clothes out of nowhere even though it's supposed to be 1912.
• Captain Ersatz: Most of the cast are imitations of characters from well-known animated films.
  • Angelica, her stepmother Gertrude, and her stepsisters are obvious Cinderella knockoffs and Angelica herself has also been compared to Don Bluth's Anastasia. Likewise, fittingly enough, Gertrude's cat Jeffrey is quite similar to Lucifer.
  • The mouse family is clearly derivative of An American Tail.
  • The two dalmatians look a lot like Pongo and Perdita from Disney's 101 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 Gonzales cartoon.
  • And there's a bumbling detective who looks like Sherlock Holmes.
  • Somewhat less obvious:
    • A magpie vaguely resembles Jeremy from The Secret of NIMH.
    • 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 Girl, with whom Victoria is traveling, looks suspiciously like a young version of Belle, from Beauty and the Beast?
    • Fritz the rapping terrier looks very much like Jock, the terrier in Lady and the Tramp.
    • The geese from The Aristocats.
    • 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).
    • Winnie the gold digger's overall appearance seems to have been copied off Molly Brown as she appears in James Cameron's Titanic.
    • And to top it all off, they couldn't resist admitting in script that the chihuahua accompanying the cat was based on Batty from FernGully: The Last Rainforest. ("Stupid dog! What am I saying? You look more like a bat!")
• Captain Obvious: In the uncut version, when the ship is sinking, someone says "We're on a ship in the middle of the ocean." The 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!"
• Catchphrase: "Sam to my friends, a threat to my enemies."
• Cats Are Mean: The stepmother's cat Geoffrey is a very unpleasant animal that threatens to eat the Mouse family at one point.
• Cinderella Plot: Angelica is a girl mistreated by her wicked stepfamily, brought along on the Titanic journey mostly to act as their servant during the trip; when she's not with them, she lives in her own lower-class cabin. When doing the laundry, she bumps into the wealthy William, who falls in Love at First Sight with her. At night, there's a party on the ship that she can go to after an old lady hands her a dress to wear, and she spends the night dancing with William for as long as she can. While the plot soon shifts to be about the iceberg, she and William do get to live Happily Ever After and escape with their lives.
• Circling Birdies: When Meanstreak's dog gets hit by a leg of chicken and flies against the wall, he gets some chicken legs spinning around his head.
  • When Gertrude's cat gets hit by the door after trying to catch the mice, he gets images of the mice spinning around his head.
• Crying Critters: When they escape in rowboats, the animals cry the same as the humans.
• 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."
• Deranged Animation: The rapping dog scene. Everybody gains a weird plastic wrap texture, and become almost gelatinous.
• Deteriorates Into Gibberish: Happens frequently, sometimes for no reason.
• The Door Slams You: Happens during the medallion retrieval scene.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Invoked. The Fievel lookalike deliberately scares away the stepsisters to defend Angelica and William.
• 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 Molly the singer, and all because she was too busy singing. Everyone else lives happily ever after, with no life-altering psychological damage at all. Even the dog made it!
  • 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 female singers were part of the group, though. They weren't.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: A brief one when Angelica and William dance at the party, unintentionally highlighting how little screen time the two romantic leads have shared together.
• Fan Disservice: The homely stepsisters are seen in their undergarments at one point.
• Fanservice Extra: Molly, the woman who sings "Hold Me" has a dress that exposes her cleavage a bit.
• Flashback Within a Flashback: The recut version makes the majority of the story happen within a flashback. This also means that flashbacks during that time occur in a flashback.
• 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.
• Friend to All Living Things: Angelica.
• Funny Animal: There are a ton of them in this movie but especially the mice family.
• 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. The one exception is Molly's gown, a strapless, backless number that looks more suitable for a modern cruise ship than anything from a century ago. There's also the rapping dog, who wears a jersey (with the letter T on it, even) and a baseball cap.
• Gratuitous Rap: The infamous dog rapping about party time, with no context or justification for doing so.
• Gratuitous Spanish: The song "Mucho Gusto". Most of it is El Spanish "-o", and the little bit of actual Spanish is totally mangled. Fiesta is strictly the noun form of "party" (festejaremos is "we will party") and mucho gusto (literally "very pleased") is the Spanish equivalent of "pleased to meet you" ("much gusto" would be translated as mucho entusiasmo).
• Happily Ever After: If there was ever a film where a Happily Ever After ending could be considered a problem, it's this. One of the mice even uses the quote happily ever after verbatim.
• Heroic Dolphin: The dolphins who help save people from the sinking ship.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: First Officer Stockard is vaguely a Jerk with a Heart of Gold (or at least the movie makers seemed to intend for that) in an earlier scene, when Molly thinks that Angelica stole her locket (in reality, Gaston found it and gave it to Molly, without knowing who the real owner was) and the officer implies to her that the necklace was Angelica's to begin with. After that, though, he becomes a snide Jerkass who, among other things, shoves another crew member out of the way to get a spot on the lifeboats. The real first officer, Murdoch, went down with the ship after helping evacuate about three quarters of the survivors, and is generally regarded as a hero.
• Hollywood Costuming: Molly wears a strapless, backless dress with a low neckline that's 1930s at the absolute earliest, and sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the far more period-accurate (for the most part; Fritz wears a very anachronistic outfit during "Party Time") clothes of the other characters.
• Hong Kong Dub: The English dub has a whole bunch of instances of oddly-translated lines that don't even attempt to match up with the Mouth Flaps of the characters, suggesting that they just went for a literal translation of the Italian in the original and hoped for the best. "If it hadn't been for you, I would be now in someone else's digestion" is probably the standout example.
• Intentional Mess Making: In one scene, Angelica's stepfamily intentionally smash some china, for the sole purpose of forcing her to clean it up.
• 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? Or more, why would she have brought this dress in a cruise trip if she was too old to even wear it?
• 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 says "IT'S A FAAAAKE!"
• Lighter and Softer: Than the live action film, as the back cover blurb explains.
  "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!!"
• Limited Animation: In fact, the animation has been compared to the The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games.
• Love at First Sight: One of the most extreme examples, as William falls head-over-heels for Angelica within seconds.
• Male Gaze: The film pays a lot of attention to Angelica and Molly's chests.
• The Mockbuster: Of James Cameron's Titanic.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Meanstreak".
• No Fourth Wall
  • "Wait a minute, wait a minute, where are you going? The movie isn't over yet!"
  • Fritz 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, the magpie, steals a pin out of a mouse's hat when he first appears, and whistles while averting eye contact when the mouse turns around. He gets away with it.
• 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 unstated reasons; in the uncut version, it's (somewhat) clarified 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." 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.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: It's considered a happy ending because all the main characters survived. Special note of the scene where Angelica finds a man in the water and is vocally disappointed because he's not William instead of just being glad to save his life.
• Recycled In Space: James Cameron's Titanic, as a Disneyesque cartoon with the main characters' genders reversed. And a rapping dog.
• Re-Release Soundtrack: In the uncut version, Fritz's rap is sort of a Patter Song with a slight beat, sung by his voice actor in a monotone, while the Mexican mice perform a mariachi song in Spanish. For the more famous recut, they get replaced respectively by the more in-your-face "Party Time" (with a different vocalist) and a cheesy English song that desperately wants to sound Mexican, called "Mucho Gusto".
• Sequel Hook: At the end, the kid mouse telling how everyone lived happily ever after says "See you soon!", even though there was no sequel made.
• Series Continuity Error: The movie can't agree whether Hortense and Bernice are Gertrude's daughters or nieces.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Angelica in the dress Victoria lent her.
• Sherlock Homage: Sam is clearly based on Sherlock Holmes, being a detective who wears a deerstalker and smokes a pipe.
• Single Tear: A dog sheds a teardrop when the ship sinks.
• Skewed Priorities: While Everybody Lives, the rescue boats had no problem filling some of the empty seats with animals.
• 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.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In real life, first officer William McMaster Murdoch went down with the ship. But First Officer Stockard in this movie survives.
• Step Servant: Angelica is basically a Cinderella expy, complete with the evil stepfamily. It's not made entirely clear how they became her stepfamily since her father is never seen and her mother is still alive, but they definitely treat her like Cinderella; in one scene, one stepsister even deliberately smashes a teacup just to make her clean up the mess.
• Stock Audio Clip: The original English dub, by virtue of simply being a dub, didn't leave out anything from the native Italian version...but this leads to an utterly bizarre issue where they have to resort to repeating dialogue whenever the scene runs too long and the new dialogue runs too short to compensate. A particularly bad case is when a guard at one point says "You can't go through this way! Don't force me to resort to violence!" three times in exactly the same way in the span of less than a minute.
• Stock Footage: The edited version is especially guilty for this.
  • 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.
  • Most of the musical sequences use the same short shots of characters repeatedly.
  • The North American edit's notoriously long closing credits recycles scenes from throughout the movie.
• Tempting Fate: One old man boards the boat and says "Let's hope it's a smooth crossing" to Angelica while moving his eyebrows in a mysterious way.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: The aforementioned rapping dog song "Party Time" and the Mexican mice's "Mucho Gusto."
• Thieving Magpie: Hector, with the most important thing he appropriates being Angelica's locket.
• Those Two Guys: The thieves are always seen working together whenever they are on screen.
• Totally Radical: Fritz's very modern rap number has a lot of rap lingo despite this being the 1910's. However, this is not shown outside the rap number.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Anthropomorphic animals, to passengers.
• Uptown Boy: William is this to Angelica, who feels unfit to be in a relationship with him because of her station. She even tells him she doesn't belong in his world and couldn't compete with the young ladies that surround him.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The actual Titanic didn't have anthropomorphic animals, for starters.
• Viewers Are Goldfish: The movie tends to repeat things that happened less than three minutes ago.
• Viewers Are Morons: During Fritz the dog's rap, there's a sign on the wall that helpfully reminds us that the genre of the song we're listening to is "RAP MUSIC".
• 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 Happened to the Mouse?: Literally, with the Mexican mouse band. During and after the sinking disaster, they are never seen nor mentioned again, but it’s implied they were among the 1,500 victims.
  • Jeremy McFlannel and Winnie are also implied to have perished as well, as they do not appear in the epilogue.
• What Song Was This Again?: The song sung by the Mexican mice in the uncut version (apparently called "Mexicana") has rather poetic Spanish lyrics talking about a "big party with friends" and a "magical night", but the refrain is grimly ironic given the Foregone Conclusion about what's going to happen to the ship—"On a night like this, nothing can go wrong; Everything will be perfect...we will never forget this night." In contrast, the recut's English equivalent "Mucho Gusto" is a much more frivolous El Spanish "-o"-laden number about how you should "dust off your dancing shoe-sto and fiesta with mucho gusto."
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: The littlest mouse. Supposedly meant to be Swedish, but it sounds Irish and even Jamaican (!) at times.
• "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, and treats her as a servant.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: "PARTY TIME! IT'S PARTY TIME!" Especially glaring since a) the movie had no songs up to that point and b) rap music hadn't even been invented yet.
• World of Buxom: The film pays a lot of attention to Angelica and Molly's chests, and Gertrude, Hortense, and Bernice are also very well-endowed, though that may be Fan Disservice.
• 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 to one another; they each 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. And we never see them again.

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