In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Monday 4 April 2016

WATERWORLD [1995]

Director Kevin Reynold's post-apocalyptic adventure Waterworld isn't quite as bad as it's 'box office flop' title suggests.
Although the harsh truth is it isn't all that good either.
The story of a mutant drifter, who travels the submerged planet in hopes of finding dry land is pretty much a friendlier version of Mad Max with flippers.
With it's impressive sets and rousing yet overly staged action sequences the film would be a wastefully fun way to spend an hour and half...only it's nearly 2 and a half hours.  The hero isn't particularly interesting or heroic, the villain is fun but not very threatening and any other character is drowned in a watery grave of blandness.  So if they aren't spending all this lengthy running time establishing characters what the hell are they doing?  The best I can come up with is they're attempting to smooth out the wonkiness of tone and pacing.

2½ jars of dirt out of 5

2 comments:

Dr Faustus said...

I watched this back in the day just to see Dennis. If I remember correctly, he was terrible in it?

I'll give it another chance someday.

cuckoo said...

This is the first time I've seen it since it was in theaters.

I recalled kind of enjoying it at the time but perhaps it was because my expectations were really really low and was too stoned to known any better. XD

Hopper delivered some Whedon script re-write lines with perfection (as he did with Speed as well) but for the most part he wasn't much at all. He seemed like he had no idea what he was doing and didn't care much either.