For the first 25 minutes or so, it's even actually good, in its derivative way. I will confess to feeling extremely disappointed: I walked into Waterworld expecting something outrageously terrible, and I got something that's. And in this it is much unlike the films that ended the careers of Michael Cimino and Elaine May. had the rather inexplicable lack of foresight to let him do the whole thing again, with the very similar The Postman (which came not even slightly close to breaking even). What it certainly did not do was stain producer-star Kevin Costner with the stink of epic failure two years later, Warner Bros. Though, whereas the legendary misfires Heaven's Gate and Ishtar both lost legitimately enormous sums of money, Waterworld actually came tolerably close to breaking even in 1995, which for a film of such a ridiculous price tag that is never seen onscreen, ain't half bad. Those who survived have adapted to a new world.' And then this spectacularly expensive motion picture elects to introduce us to that new world by showing the main character running his freshly-pissed pee through a filter, and drinking it.Īnd thus does the Hollywood Century Trilogy of Spectacular Flops come to a close with the inevitable Waterworld the little $175 million film that couldn't. The polar ice caps have melted, covering the Earth with water. We get the scene-setting as a portentous but oddly tinny-sounding narrator invokes 'The future. Pee-drinking is the first thing that happens. I foreground pee-drinking not because it's fun to take cheap shots (which it is), but because the film genuinely cares that much.

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