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Think about that. In an annihilated world where refined oil and 50 caliber ammunition still aren't too valuable to waste, it's nice to know you can still find a beautiful woman with perfect skin, lustrously conditioned hair and straight teeth. And he wants to throw her - and her kid - into the sea. It's a genuinely disturbing moment, and it makes Costner look immensely practical, yet somewhat less than heroic. It adds a lot to the film, but unfortunately all that is taken away with in moments, when Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) appears as what I can only assume is meant to be the most poorly timed comic relief in film history.

And that is where the movie completely falls apart.

Waterworld devotes its second half devoted to being a chase movie on water. This would be cool, except for the fact that the Mariner's subplot is a dark, turbulent descent into hell. Meanwhile, our time we spend with The Deacon is utterly different in tone, and not in a good way. Every time Hopper is on screen it feels like you're watching reels from Joel Schumacher's epic, unfinished post apocalyptic version of Pirates of Penzance. It's like someone crossed Mad Max with Batman Forever, and then pushed the whole mess out to sea.

The upside is that Dennis Hopper is an outstandingly cartoonish villain. Too bad he's in the wrong movie. His performance merely establishes the boundary between Waterworld's bipolar character, and Kim Coates' rapey court jester sends the whole story pinwheeling through the air like Fonzie on water skis. While The Mariner and his passengers are desperately seeking dry land, Hopper and his crew are within a hairsbreadth of breaking out in song and hitting each other with rubber mallets. Is this a high minded sci-fi commentary on human shortsightedness, an action movie, or a Saturday Night Live skit?

Answer: It's all three. There are some interesting things going on in Waterworld, but the schizophrenic nature of both the plot and tone render it essentially meaningless. What started out as an all too rare fresh take on a fundamentally frightening concept - the end of the world - squanders the opportunity by making itself look as much like a really long gag reel as possible. Had there been a director's cut of this movie with a laugh track, it would have taken on a whole new character, and might even have become a comedy classic.

As it is, it's somewhere between as mind numbingly depressing as Ishtar and unintentionally hilarious as Battlefield Earth.

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