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The classic American action movie was about a man walking through perilous landscapes. But this is also a picture that shows off a lot of what's wrong with the current studio system. The movie, Costner and Hopper all amuse us. Hopper mugs away as everyone's favorite '60s degenerate hippie turned funny fiend. Too often, it relies instead on a kind of antic, rib-digging jocularity: Michael Jeter pulls faces as daft airman Gregor. But "Waterworld" probably needs even more, and darker, comedy. Though Reynolds has shown visual flair ever since "Fandango," he and absurdity haven't been strangers-even when he adds visual majesty, as in his and Costner's "Rapa Nui." But he also cast buddy Costner as a drawling Robin Hood and wrote the original script for John Milius' 1984 militia mindboggler "Red Dawn," the one with high school jocks battling a Soviet invasion of the American Northwest. Costner is Reynolds' enabler, ever since their 1985 "Fandango"-an enjoyably modest Vietnam-era road movie. Why does everyone in this depopulated future world seem to have a different accent? And that gang of capering, screaming ruffians on Deacon's tanker: Are they symbols of consumerism and waste gone mad, as Reynolds seems to think? Or are they a mass of squalling, wanton dirty rabble, natural enemies of Costner's lone yachtsman?
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have come up with those cigarette-puffing villains, in a world with hardly enough dirt for a tobacco plant? Or that scene where Mariner reads a mysteriously preserved copy of National Geographic underwater? Or the ludicrous Luis Bunuel-style gags where Deacon pops out his egg-sized glass eye? "Waterworld" is often entertaining because it's screwy. (Was she named for the Hiroshima bomber, Enola Gay?) Afterward, when these three glow with love, we wonder what brought them together-besides water.
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As for little Enola, Mariner starts their relationship by threatening to throw her overboard. Instead of the standard boy-meets-girl cutesy hostility, Reynolds shows Mariner and Helena-after escaping a Smoker raid-squabbling, screaming and bashing each other with oars. There's also bad stuff in "Waterworld": a streak of weird meanness, counterbalanced by the usual softie sentimentality. The movie is big, bright, opulently eye-filling, packed with delightfully barmy clutter and design. What's most entertaining about "Waterworld," ultimately, is its excess. "Warrior" cinematographer Dean Semler is on hand to shoot "Waterworld's" ocean and give it a brassy gleam. Obviously, Reynolds and writers David Twohy and Peter Rader want to copy the world's-end mood of Miller's trilogy, that atmosphere of speed, rust, raucous heavies and boiling sun. It's closer in intention to George Miller's 1979-85 "Mad Max" trilogy-the great futuristic thriller set in post-apocalypse Australia. Nor is it "Gone With the Waves" or "Foam Alone." Nor, for that matter, "Dances With Whales."