"Not nearly as crap as everyone said... but still basically crap."
Kev Costner's much laughed at 'epic on the water' was just one of those disasters that everyone wanted to happen. Like Speed 2 and Kevvy's later apocalyptic hack-job The Postman, nobody wanted Waterworld to make a profit, if for no other reason than to teach a few goofy execs a lesson. It sucked and nobody went to see it... but it still made money. Trust me. It did....and it didn't cost nearly as much as the hype machine said it did.
But I digress. Waterworld is all about a post-apocalyptic world where the icecaps have melted and land is flooded over. Fresh water is non-existant and treated more preciously than gold.
Big Kev lives on a boat. Cool boat. Kev pees in a bottle and it comes out water. Cool bottle. Kev has a plant. It makes fruit. The fruit isn't cool. It's just fruit.
Kev stops in at a big old island type thing that makes water and tries to defend itself against the decidedly Mad Max style bad guys by swinging on ropes with a knife in his teeth. Kev gets himself caught in the middle of the ensuing battle and almost drowns in poo. In saving himself he ends up stuck with a dorky woman and a little kid who's supposedly can get to "the promised land".
Kev doesn't want her using his crayons. Dennis Hopper has one eye. Jeanne Tripplehorn gets naked. Kev swings on ropes a lot and blows some big sets up.
Is it good? Feh. It's watchable. Certainly not as gosh darn stupid as The Postman, but not nearly as fun as Field Of Dreams. Costner shows his entire acting range, which basically amounts to squinting and sailing. He did the same thing in Message In A Bottle, except slower.It's certainly worth a rental, on a slow Saturday afternoon when there's nothing on TV but Elvis movies and Tractor Pulls. On the Post-Apocalyptic Costner scale, Waterworld gets a rating of two bombs. And it's lucky to get that many.
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