This is what happens when you have badly inflamed sinus polyps and cannot sleep - you watch whatever your cable has on because you're too tired to search Netflix. And what do you get? Waterworld.
Note to Overmind One - this flick can give Tank Girl a run for the facepalm money.....:disgust:
Waterworld as many of us doubtless know, is Kevin Costner's Post-Apocalyptic opus. It kept going over budget and eventually came in at a whopping 175 million dollars to make it - in 1995.
The "plot" centers around Costner and some other humans searching for land in a future Earth totally covered in water (more on this later - it is one of the really silly elements). They are also being hunted by the bad guys, led by Dennis Hopper.
First to the acting. Costner plays his nameless character (I called him Patrick Duffy in honor of the old TV show "The Man from Atlantis") almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger plays characters - little dialogue and little expression. This was surprising because usually in big dollar Sci-Fi films the problem is overacting and this is epic scale underacting. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays his (sort of) love interest with a lack of conviction. Really, the only actor who does a good job is Dennis Hopper in the role of The Deacon, head of The Smokers (the bad guys).
Hopper's performance deserves special commendation, as he seems to be the only person in the cast who understands what type of character he is playing and what the role needs to be effective. And he delivers it very well. It's over the top but very entertaining. In a way, it's like Hopper has fused his portrayal of Billy from "Easy Rider" with Brian Blessed's Voltan from "Flash Gordon".
As to the SFX, they're okay but you do wonder what they spent 175 million on. It turns out a LOT of it was spent on the floating city near the start of the film - they really built it. They also built a manmade sea off the coast of Hawaii with it inside to film in - and then had the whole thing sink in a storm...
Remember I said I would get back to the worldwide ocean premise? Well now is the time. Frankly the way it is presented is ridiculous and destroys (at least for me) any suspension of disbelief. Apparently AGW (Right...) melted all the icecaps and covered the Earth in water. By the way several scenes play out it would be a uniform covering of at least 25,000 feet of water over the current sea level. first off, even if you melted every scrap of ice on the planet the sea level would rise about 65 feet from what I would find out. Second, adding that much water would RADICALLY alter the atmospheric pressure and even I think the gravity - this assumes that all the millions of tons of new water somehow came to Earth from outer space.
Then there is Costner's character, who we see swim using his "gills" all the way to the bottom of the waterworld. Even funnier, he takes Jeanne Tripplehorn with him in a bathyscape he made out of plastic sheets and wire. somehow this contraption withstands the pressure that far down and somehow she does not have the bends when they quickly surface?
I could go on and on but the idiocy of the premise drags the whole film down. It's why I compared it loosely to Tank Girl which likewise has a ridiculous premise. It's a pity Dennis Hopper did so well in this film, because aside from him watching this thing is like having surgery without anesthetic.
Note to Overmind One - this flick can give Tank Girl a run for the facepalm money.....:disgust:
Waterworld as many of us doubtless know, is Kevin Costner's Post-Apocalyptic opus. It kept going over budget and eventually came in at a whopping 175 million dollars to make it - in 1995.
The "plot" centers around Costner and some other humans searching for land in a future Earth totally covered in water (more on this later - it is one of the really silly elements). They are also being hunted by the bad guys, led by Dennis Hopper.
First to the acting. Costner plays his nameless character (I called him Patrick Duffy in honor of the old TV show "The Man from Atlantis") almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger plays characters - little dialogue and little expression. This was surprising because usually in big dollar Sci-Fi films the problem is overacting and this is epic scale underacting. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays his (sort of) love interest with a lack of conviction. Really, the only actor who does a good job is Dennis Hopper in the role of The Deacon, head of The Smokers (the bad guys).
Hopper's performance deserves special commendation, as he seems to be the only person in the cast who understands what type of character he is playing and what the role needs to be effective. And he delivers it very well. It's over the top but very entertaining. In a way, it's like Hopper has fused his portrayal of Billy from "Easy Rider" with Brian Blessed's Voltan from "Flash Gordon".
As to the SFX, they're okay but you do wonder what they spent 175 million on. It turns out a LOT of it was spent on the floating city near the start of the film - they really built it. They also built a manmade sea off the coast of Hawaii with it inside to film in - and then had the whole thing sink in a storm...
Remember I said I would get back to the worldwide ocean premise? Well now is the time. Frankly the way it is presented is ridiculous and destroys (at least for me) any suspension of disbelief. Apparently AGW (Right...) melted all the icecaps and covered the Earth in water. By the way several scenes play out it would be a uniform covering of at least 25,000 feet of water over the current sea level. first off, even if you melted every scrap of ice on the planet the sea level would rise about 65 feet from what I would find out. Second, adding that much water would RADICALLY alter the atmospheric pressure and even I think the gravity - this assumes that all the millions of tons of new water somehow came to Earth from outer space.
Then there is Costner's character, who we see swim using his "gills" all the way to the bottom of the waterworld. Even funnier, he takes Jeanne Tripplehorn with him in a bathyscape he made out of plastic sheets and wire. somehow this contraption withstands the pressure that far down and somehow she does not have the bends when they quickly surface?
I could go on and on but the idiocy of the premise drags the whole film down. It's why I compared it loosely to Tank Girl which likewise has a ridiculous premise. It's a pity Dennis Hopper did so well in this film, because aside from him watching this thing is like having surgery without anesthetic.
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Nothing I have seen is worst, but Starship Troopers 3 comes very close. Its in that club though. Slyline is a contender. I can think of many movies worse than Waterworld, but for sheer waste of more than 100 million, it has a special place.
:icon_e_biggrin:
