The first thing Kevin Costner does in Waterworld (1995) is drink his own urine so enthusiastically that he takes a few moments to gargle it. I’d like to say that this early moment is a tidy encapsulation of Costner’s passion project — which was the most expensive movie ever made at the time of its release — but I wouldn’t take things so far. The film, which Costner also produced in addition to starred, is not so much bad as it is boring, enlivened in spurts by a couple of terrific action sequences (one toward the beginning and other at the end) and a villain performance from a bald, eyepatched, and Southern-accented Dennis Hopper that feels like the acting equivalent of feasting on a huge steak with your bare hands.
Waterworld takes place in a distant future where all the polar ice caps have melted. Most of the population hasn’t been able to survive in a world where everything is covered in water, though there’s some talk of there being mystical dry land somewhere out there, like the concept of faraway California in an East Coast-set apocalypse movie. Those who remain alive scrape by either on boats of their own making or living on cobbled-together communities they call atolls.
Played by Costner, Waterworld’s protagonist is among the former. He’s known only as the Mariner, and he has gills; webbed feet; and the classically masculine reticence of a character that might have, in a parallel universe made up of bolder career decisions, been played by Steve McQueen. (Further putting you in mind of the latter is Jeanne Tripplehorn, a love-interest character who’s also a ringer for McQueen’s second wife and recurring co-star Ali MacGraw.) The Mariner is a loner never developed as more or less than that by screenwriters Peter Rader and David Twohy; he’s only a hero because he’s supposed to be.
Kevin Costner and Jeanne Tripplehorn in Waterworld.
The Mariner comes into contact with the Tripplehorn character, Helen, at an atoll where he’s nearly put to death for his amphibious traits and for killing someone who attacks him. After the atoll is ambushed by a gang of pirates led by a delightfully over-the-top Hopper, the Mariner absconds with Helen and the little girl, Enola (Tina Majorino), responsible for turning that atoll into a target. Enola has clairvoyant-like powers; word has it that she might be the key to narrowing down where much-lusted-after “Dryland” is.
Harboring Helen and Enola turns the Mariner into the kind of leader he’s long avoided being. The movie is dotted with little mini-adventures — a run-in with a mutated shark, a plunge underwater to check out what remains of Denver — that don’t so much feel vital as a means of padding out an overlong 135-minute runtime. Both narratively and aesthetically, Waterworld clearly wants to be a wetter version of the Mad Max movies. It has about as much imagination — it’s fun, at first, to see how society has adapted to this watery new world, jet skis newly a reliable form of transportation and plain-and-simple dirt a hot commodity — but lacks its spiritual companion’s excitement and assortment of easy-to-root-for characters.
If director Kevin Reynolds were to prioritize action sequences the way Mad Max’s George Miller had, Waterworld would be an effective cat-and-mouse thriller with an enjoyably unusual conceit. Instead, this is a movie with a decent concept that isn’t nearly as exploratory and escapism-minded as it ought to be. It was difficult to make — much budget was wasted on poorly planned open-water shooting, which explains why the movie never looks as expensive as it was to shoot, and Costner was unduly creatively demanding behind the scenes — and you felt that lack of ease in a finished product that doesn’t so much charge forward as plod along. Waterworld is as lost at sea as its characters.
Peterson Reviews 