Yes.

Titanic's success, as a film, continues to baffle. Yes, some of the visuals were stunning, but there was also a script full of insipid dialogue that sounded like it was written by a newly-born hedgehog and acting that was, to say the least, unimpressive. Backing all of this up is James Horner's music, which because of the success of the film has gone on to become the biggest-selling soundtrack ever. But you go out on the street and ask someone to hum a theme from the score, and I doubt you'll get much response. Then do it for Star Wars and see what happens.

Probably because of the deficiencies in the script, Horner's score hammers home every on-screen emotion again and again and again, forcing the audience into submission. In this respect, it's one of the most effective scores in recent times. The disc is split into three roughly-equal sections - the opening third deals with setting up the story and the launching from port, then comes the sinking of the ship, then the soppy stuff at the end.

The opening segment is rather peculiar. Say what you want about Horner, but one thing that cannot be denied is that he has a keen dramatic sense virtually unparalleled in his generation. Why would anyone think that Enya-sounding music would be appropriate for the Titanic leaving port? But it works well. Horner is also, of course, the only film composer ever to have been successfully sued for plagiarism (more than once!) - and reports persist that there was an out-of-court settlement with Enya over Titanic - hardly surprising.

The middle segment, the action music, is mostly rather bland - violin runs going over repeated orchestral crashes, over and over again, that sound like all other James Horner action music and don't do anything for me at all. When he changes this approach a little - as he does in the middle of a couple of the lengthy cues - it becomes much more enjoyable. It's worth noting that none of this action music (apart from the bits ripped-off from Capricorn One, of course) can actually be heard in the movie, so to be honest he may just as well have not bothered writing any of it anyway...

Finally, when Horner really begins to manipulate the emotions, the last third is quiet, sombre and reflective - though it is also very, very repetitive. Most of it is based around orchestral versions of "My Heart Will Go On", the song, and it does become tiresome after a while. Sometimes, the Norwegian vocalist Sissel "sings" a wordless version of the song, in an obvious derivation from Ennio Morricone's famous soprano solo pieces. The song itself, sung by Celine Dion, is really rather good, despite the atrocious lyrics by Will Jennings.

So Titanic is a reasonable, if not great, score - though ultimately, as with most albums of this length, it would probably have been far more enjoyable had twenty minutes been judiciously trimmed from the running time. It's a very long way from being among Horner's better scores and the fact that it is probably most of the world's only exposure to a film score album is really quite sad.

The sounds of "oiceburg, roight ahead!" could have been referring to the state of film music just as much as the boat.

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