I'm no movie critic, but I think Kevin Costner got...
Over His Head in "WATERWORLD"...

What can I say; there are some people who just can't look away from a train wreck; I'm different; I actually go out and buy train wrecks and take 'em home. Such is the case with "Waterworld"; I bought the DVD on sale and took it home. I'd heard the movie was given a huge thumbs down by the movie-reviewing community. So, out of simple curiosity, I just had to see how baaaaaaad it was. And, really, if you throw total implausibility out the window, the movie can be enjoyed on a certain level. But still...what a 'stretch of the imagination' a lot of things in the movie are.

The movie takes place way in the future after the Polar Ice caps have melted and the entire planet is covered with water. (although I've read in Science books that if the entire icecap melted, water levels would only rise, say, several dozen feet around the world.) So evidently, according to the movie, the setting is many, many years after water covered the planet because no one in the movie has ever seen the mythical "dryland" although they have faith it is out there somewhere. Kevin Costner is a sort of "water survivor" who is actually a MUTANT; he can stay underwater for a long time, because with the process of evolution, he has GILLS. If all the Biology courses I took in college are to be believed, mutations like that would take eons to develop.

Costner paddles thru the water on an old rusted double-pontooned craft, and one wonders, "if there is no 'dryland', how could he have found all that scrap metal and pounded it into shape?" And that's when you have to reason that, "oh, he has gills", so he probably could've actually gone to the ocean bottom to find the scrap metal remnants of a long-ago dry-land civilization and could have stayed down there long enough to pound the metal into shape" Or, if he'd found a complete craft down at the ocean bottom, maybe he pushed it upwards several thousand feet, back to the ocean's surface, if one doesn't assume his rusted watercraft had never sunk, but had floated for eons. A little far-fetched, eh?

Kevin Costner's chief enemies, are a group called the "smokers" (the head cheese of which is portrayed by Dennis Hopper, who is outrageously sub-par with some terrible script dialogue). The "smokers" are a bunch of sea pirates who ride around the ocean in the hulk of a rusting tanker, and they make it a point to do damage to unsuspecting small craft with an army of old dilapidated jet-ski's and they even have an old all-metal seaplane! Which begs the question, if earth is covered by water, where'd they get the gas? (Because, the engines "smoke", after all.) And again, how could they go and get Jet-ski's or Seaplanes from the ocean bottom? The "Smokers" don't have gills, after all.

A seaplane on earth's surface would be about as deep in "Waterworld" as the Titanic is for us today...and no one's been able to raise that ship, either. Reasoning dictates that if those jet-ski's and seaplanes were not procured from the ocean's bottom, they would have had to have been floating on the water for many centuries, which is improbable, because, remember, Kevin Costner is a mutant who has gills, which took eons to evolve. And maybe the fuel needed for those craft could've been horded for millennia, though I rather doubt it. If the planet is totally covered with water, as the voice in the movie's intro states, that would mean the water is close to 30,000 feet deep over the continents, and much deeper than that over the ocean bottom as it exists today. Which would make it difficult to harvest ANYTHING from the ocean bottom, especially when you factor in water pressure, which this movie doesn't address at ALL...

So anyway, huge sea battles ensue, there are explosions, special visual effects, lots and lots of water everywhere, with the "bad guys", the "smokers", getting killed off. And, as the "Smoker's" rusting hulk slowly sinks into the sea, the camera switches to an aerial version of its stern just before sinking into the ocean...on which you can see the name of the ship...The 'EXXON VALDEZ', you know, the tanker that ran aground in Alaska and spilt all that oil...(Huh? WHAT?) I guess, the movie had become so 'hopeless' by this point that the movie's producers thot, "well, we'd better include something RELEVANT!" With that, Costner, the lady who's his love interest, and her little girl finally end up reaching "dryland".

This is where I'm flabbergasted...if the earth is totally covered with water, wouldn't MT. EVEREST be the last possible piece of "dryland"?; after all, it is the highest point on earth. But our merry adventurers reach what is actually an island coast with ultra-high cliffs above it, which just finally renders this movie totally unbelievable. If it's an ocean island coast, well, there's 29,000 feet of terra firma above it. Tell me, Kevin, how could the earth have been covered with water with so much high land above the coast that you HAD JUST REACHED? And, in the end, Costner can't stay on the island, coast, whatever, with his woman, because after all, he has gills and the sea beckons him. It's at that point the movie (mercifully) ends...

So if you can put yourself into a mental "parallel universe" and just accept what's happening in the movie (although you can't help but think the premise of the movie is just totally ridiculous), it's not that bad. The special effects are well-done, and I suppose in many years, the way the Earth is depicted in "Waterworld" will actually result. Truly "water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink." Which reminds me...ugh...the opening scene of the movie shows Costner actually urinating into a bottle. Then he pours the bottle's contents into some kind of converter, which turns his "deposit" back into water, and then he DRINKS it in front of the camera for all to see. The movie STARTS OUT that way, and ACK...kinda sets the tone for "Waterworld's" overall ridiculousness. All of a sudden, I have a bright idea: Maybe the fuel that the "smokers" used for their airplanes and jet-ski's came from the same source as Costner's drinking water? Wait...this movie stretches things enough without any help from me...

Costner and company evidently had set out to create a major-level blockbuster classic but in the end, "WATERWORLD" just kinda rolls over and dies; with each development along the way, the movie just kills itself; this time, I'm afraid the critics were right. This movie just "loses it" on all levels. Now all I have to do is go out and get a video of "Heavens' Gate"...I saw it once, didn't comprehend it at all, and since it, too, is so bad, it deserves another reviewing. I'll just hafta remember to fortify my senses before putting the DVD in. I've done the same thing with Music, too; I've gone out of my way to find records/CD's that have been mercilessly castigated by the Reviewing segment of our population, and sometimes, I didn't think the music was all that bad; other times I couldn't wait for the record to end so I could remove it from my turntable! One such negative music review was spot-on: One critic's view of Bing Crosby's version of "Hey Jude" was that it was totally ridiculous. Sadly, for 'der Bingle', the reviewers won that round. Bing's musical version of "Waterworld", sounds like.

I've stolen a phrase from one of Hermans' Hermits hits from the '60s..."Waterworld" is probably "A Must To Avoid"...a lot of money was obviously spent on it, but it just kinda leans over and hits the floor with a dull thud, and then you realize that the two-plus hours you've spent watching are two-hours of your life you'll never have back again. Oh well; give 'em a good grade for 'effort', I guess. Thud...
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I realize a good movie reviewer will never reveal the ending of the film, but it came out 12 years ago, and the conclusion of the movie is as ridiculous, if not more, than all of the footage leading up to it. Of course, the "Waterworld" DVD does have a dual purpose. If you plan on never viewing it again, you can always use it for a rather cool coffee-cup coaster!