In the future, when the Earth is covered by water, a loner (Kevin Costner) traveling the seas on his sailboat, makes a deal with a resident of a floating village to take her (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and a child (Tina Majorino) to safely. He doesn’t know the child is being hunted by Deacon (Dennis Hopper) and his ocean-going marauders because she has a map to the mythical “dryland” tattooed on her back.
So, Mad Max travels alone, occasionally fighting raiders, until he comes to a settlement and… Wait a second, this isn’t the The Road Warrior? It sure looks like the The Road Warrior, with water switched for the sand, and of course without any of that bothersome talent. I can imagine the meeting that greenlighted this project, with Costner and a Hollywood mogul or two sitting around, watching videotapes and drinking far too many beers. After a double feature of The Road Warrior, and Shane, Costner burps and stumbles across the room, attempting his best tough-guy swagger.
“See, I..hick…I could do that.” At which point, he falls over.
“Yeah, right,” says Mogul One, “you can’t even walk straight.”
“It’s like he’s walking on a boat that’s flopping,” says Mogul Two.
“I do not flop,” says Costner indignantly from the floor and fumbling for his zipper.
“Not flop. You know, like a wave,” says Mogul Two before belching.
“Yeah!” Costner jumps up only to fall down again. “Me on a boat being Mel Gibson.”
“Boat!” adds Mogul one. “We could put the whole thing at sea. So, you could have fins, and a blow hole.”
“I’m not having no blow hole. People are already talking.”
“Ok. OK. Just some gills then.”
And the rest is history. 175 million piece of history, though the ridiculously high cost of the film, which doesn’t show on screen, isn’t nearly as important as how badly they bungled almost every aspect of the project.
First there is casting. The biggest flaw there is Costner, who brings all the emotion to the screen that he demonstrated in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. When you are too drab to play an emotionally stunted loner, what roles are left for you? Victim of a sedative overdose in a hospital drama? Gibson managed to toss in just the right amount of psychosis, and Eastwood (who did the part more times than anyone in his spaghetti westerns) had an undercurrent of rage. Costner just looks sleepy.
Jeanne Tripplehorn isn’t obviously the wrong choice. She is attractive enough (which makes me wonder just how much time each day do people in this post-apocalyptic, fresh water low environment, spend grooming? A lot in her case. That’s probably why they are low on drinking water.). But she has zero chemistry with Costner. That wouldn’t have been a problem if the script didn’t call for an unnecessary and impossible-to-believe romance. Tripplehorn also spends most of the movie with an expression which says “I’ve just eaten bad fish,” but that could be a directing problem.
Finally there is Dennis Hopper, who thinks he was hired for a parody. His entire performance could be spliced into an Austin Powers film. Again, this is partly a directing problem as other parts of the movie are solemn.
The biggest problem is the script, which calls for us to accept far too many improbable events. OK, the world is completely flooded with salt water due to the melting of the poles. I guess I should just ignore science, as that’s not what would happen if the poles melted (poles which are covered in fresh water ice). But I’ll give them that one. Now the movie takes place far enough in the future that no one even remembers dry land or cities, and the stories passed down do not include the now sunken metropolises. It has also been enough time for mutant humans with gills to appear (ummmm, I think that would be a loooong time). Yet, there is a working airplane. There are numerous functional jet skis. There is ammunition. There are flares. And in a time when it is clear that paper is extremely rare, and valuable (it certainly would be rare), there is tons of rolling paper. Actually, it’s not just rolling paper, but cigarettes in packs, with filters.
Ah, but the script is not done being stupid yet. It also has unbelievable events. How about an untrained person shooting, and hitting, an airplane with a harpoon? I’d be interesting in hearing of any cases, ever, where an expert hit a plane with a harpoon. There is also the interesting choice of having a plane attack by towing skiers over a jump. If you have a plane, there are lots of ways you can attack with it (like dropping things on your opponents), but that isn’t one of them. The story also makes Costner’s Mariner a killing machine at one point, but unable to defend himself against two men at another, even when he could have jumped in the water and stayed there indefinitely.
Where the script really fails is with the kid. Both The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome have children, and Thunderdome is often criticized for it. But those close cousin films both avoid the cutesy kid moments. In those, the children fit into the story and theme, keeping a rough edge. In Waterworld we are subjected to “cute kid scenes,” including slow motion hugging with Kostner taking on the loving father role. How sweet. Now that’s what I want to see in my action picture.
The straight-up action scenes aren’t bad, though they should be better. There are far too many shots of pulleys and levers on Mariner’s boat, and the choreographed jet skis and water skis start to look like a Florida water park show, but overall, when people are getting killed, it is watchable.
But that does lead to the final failing: editing. With only the action and locations offering entertainment, the movie is far too long. It starts slow, that then grinds to a halt in the middle and the three main characters sail about and bicker. Supposedly, forty minutes were cut over the objections of the director. Cut another forty, and Waterworld would be amusing, if still empty.
s, but times have changed. Much of its effectiveness came from its ability to shock. In ’95, you were unlikely to find anything else quite like it (except its hard to find predecessor). But South Park’s own success as a series has made this material more acceptable, or at least more common.
