Waterworld (1995)
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Waterworld Movie Review
Waterworld is a 1995 post-apocalyptic action film directed by Kevin Reynolds and starring Kevin Costner. It was and still is a total misfire.
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“He doesn’t have a name so Death can’t find him!“
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The polar ice caps have melted down and most of Earth is underwater. In this situation, a mutated mariner fights starvation and reluctantly helps a woman and a young girl find dry land. This was one of the biggest movies of 1995, though it still failed to recoup what was for its time an enormous budget. It was panned by the critics and it is just as mediocre now as it was back when it was released.
This is basically ‘Mad Max’ on water. The problem here is that the action set pieces lack the kinetic energy and deft execution of the aforementioned franchise. The result is a film that genuinely bored me to death as it was filled with a huge amount of action sequences, but the vast majority of them weren’t even well executed in the first place.
Of course, the science fiction post-apocalyptic elements fared even worse. The basic concept was actually very strong and the movie is visually appealing, but its environmental message felt shoehorned in while the overall script was so slim as it failed to properly explore this interesting world. The movie resorted to only a patch of the ocean, which made it limited in scope, which was certainly not the filmmakers’ intention, but unfortunately that’s what happened here.
Admittedly, Waterworld looks excellent. Its huge budget paid off as the resulting picture features stunning production design, some truly impressive boats and ships, and terrific cinematography. It was actually shot on location, which made it look both believable and fresh. It’s a shame that today’s movies don’t look like this anymore. The score is also pretty good.
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But the characterization is terrible and the dialogue is even worse. There are so many cringe-worthy lines spoken in this movie that they frustrated me to no end with their lack of subtlety and nuance. Kevin Costner is fine, but his boring protagonist is so bland and forgettable that he sank the entire story with him unfortunately. I just did not care for any of these people, which is a problem for a film that clocked over two hours.
