Viewed in
2013
Formats
HDTV
Premise
Kevin Costner stars as a loner in a post-apocalyptic world in which the planet is completely covered in water, and humans live on boats.
Liked
Creative, elaborate set designs.
Disliked
Patience-testing length, uninteresting characters.
Hated
Screeching little girl.
Thoughts
Best thing about it was the interesting production design and sets. I dug Costner's transforming sailboat, with sails ingeniously hidden in the chasis until it was time to catch some wind. I recalled the bad press it got for its budget, but you definitely see the money on the screen, with impressively realized waterborne cities in the vast ocean. There was some nice details, like Costner's pee-to-freshwater-filter.
The action scenes were well done, with lots of water stunts that you don't see often in action flicks, like henchmen using ski jets and ramps to scale city barricades.
Unfortunately, as a whole, it was rather boring. Not just because of its ridiculous runtime, but also due to lack of characters. There was no chemistry between Costner and love interest Jeanne Tripplehorn. Dennis Hopper brought nothing new to the cackling/wise-cracking villain. And the kid came off as an insufferable mini-banshee.
As a tangent, whodathunk that annoying girl would become the chick from Napoleon Dynamite. Also, I didn't recognize Jack Black as a pilot until afterwards, as his voice should've given it away.
So while technically Waterworld didn't suck, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone, unless you just want to fast-forward to the action scenes.
