My Review of "Waterworld"

Waterworld is one of the most controversial movies of 1995. At the time it was one of the biggest blockbuster movies that bombed in the movie theatres. Before memes were a thing this movie was made fun of in various ways. I remember seeing this movie back in the day not thinking it was absolutely terrible. Now, almost 30 years later I thought I'd give it another shot. Was this movie unfairly panned?

The movie starts out with an explanation of what had happened to our world. We continued to pollute and this melted the Arctic and I guess Antarctic ice. Apparently there was so much water in the melted ice that all of civilization was drowned in water. Everyone now lives on boats or some sort of floatation device. It's sort of like a water version of Mad Max.

We then meet an unnamed man sailing on his boat. Everyone simply call this guy Mariner as he doesn't really have a name. He's trying to make ends meet by exploring the ocean and finding old relics of the old world. When he tries to trade his findings he is greeted with hostility. They find out that he's an evolved human. He has gills to breathe underwater and webbed feet to swim better.

As such he's taken in and sentenced to death just before the floating trades village gets ransacked by outlaws known as the Smokers. What the Smokers want is a girl in the village. This girl by the name of Enola has an important map tattooed to her back. Apparently, this is a map to the fabled dry land that everyone wishes to find.

Enola has a protective mother figure by the name of Helen. Helen will do anything to protect Enola. When the floating trades village gets attacked by the Smokers their only choice is to free the Mariner and hope he brings them to dry land. Mariner of course saves them and they're on their way to dry land with the Smokers constantly chasing them.

The movie seems to be doing alright up until the Mariner meets up with Enola and Helen. There's a really rough period of time for the three of them to warm up to each other. Each of them are so unlikeable that you kind of want to shut the movie off. To be fair, this is an apocalyptic world where no one trusts anyone. The problem I had is in the weird logic everyone has in their heads during this portion of the movie.

I found it really weird that Helen and Enola would trust the Mariner to go to dry land and not even mention that the tattoo on the back of Enola is a map to dry land. It makes no sense. They also don't trust in the Mariner's decisions despite the fact that he's been sailing all his life and they've been in a village for the most part of their lives. Of course he's going to know more than you out in the ocean, yet, Helen decides that she knows the best course of action over and over again.

There are some pretty cool scenes. Closer to the end the Mariner has a Batman/John Wick moment where he's just assassinating his targets left and right like a ninja. This is offset by a series of cartoonish events that make the movie feel somewhat like it's laughing at itself. Tonally, this movie is all over the place and not very consistent. At times, it feels like you're watching a multitude of different movies into one. They want to be the man with no name trilogy, then Mad Max, Then Batman, and then 90's cheesy action movie. It's very hard to watch through.

I did like the fact that a lot of the scenes were done practically. This was probably why the budget for this movie skyrocketed like crazy but it shows. You can tell that they're on a real floating village and it's pretty impressive when you see it.

Overall, the action sequences and the nice practical effects do not outweigh the illogical, inconsistent and at times annoying movie. There are things to like about this movie but they are few. I definitely would not recommend this movie to anyone. It can be an interesting curiosity but don't tell me I didn't warn you. I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10.