Before we get into the review, I must warn you about some bias on my part. I used to work with the guy who drew the Waterworld comic book mini-series. He said the mini-series was fun to work on because Kevin Costner wouldn't let the comic book people use his likeness. That meant the main character could look however he wanted to draw him. He would've hated having to draw Kevin Costner's face about 85 times each issue. Can you blame him?

Forget everything you've heard about Waterworld. I'm going to tell you what the main problem of the movie is. No, it's not that "if the ice caps melted they wouldn't have flooded the entire planet" thing. It's this: You go to a movie theater and buy your ticket. What do you get? One of those vat-sized cola things because it was only twenty-five cents more. So you lug your keg of soda into the theater and sit down and start sipping. That's when you realize you're about to watch a three hour movie that features a lot of water everywhere, and the first scene has Kevin Costner urinating. Thank you, movie people!

What is it with movies? I was watching the first Harry Potter movie and there about two hours into the movie, they decide to set a ten-minute long scene in the middle of a raging rainstorm with buckets of water pouring down the windows. The Fellowship of the Ring? You sit through two and a half hours of movie, and Cate Blanchett decides to slowly pour a pitcher of water into a bowl. If I ever make a movie, you can expect a scene about a half-hour before the end where several people decide to urinate by a waterfall in the middle of a thunderstorm. I'd continue this review of Waterworld, but I've got to use the restroom. Be right back.

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Okay, now, where was I? Oh yes. The movie is just mind-numbingly awful. Probably not as awful as Battlefield Earth, but it's rather intolerable. The plot is that the ice caps melted just after the Earth imported a bunch of water from someplace, and now there's a lot of water around. In fact, the entire planet is covered in water except for one place, supposedly. Kevin Costner finds a girl that has a map tattooed on her back that shows where the only dry land remaining on the planet is. Everyone wants this map.

Let's think about that for a second.

It's a map of a planet that has absolutely no features; a perfect, flawless, unmarred sphere. There's no way to tell where you are on the map unless you can see the only island on the planet. If you can see that island, do you really need a map to find it?

Dennis Hopper is the leader of the bad guys. His character is manic, like all of his roles since...well, probably since his high school production of "Our Town." I'll bet he was the Stage Manager. Wouldn't that be something to see? Anyway, he and his band of beatniks live on the Exxon Valdez, which contains lots of fuel for various sports watercraft, tons of generic Spam, and plenty of cigarettes. Enough cigarettes to live off, I guess.

Anyway, there's lots of predictable action sequences. My favorite was the scene where the bad guy's jet-skis pop up out from underneath the water right by Kevin's boat-thing in a daring surprise attack that catches everyone unaware. The very next shot is a wide-angle overhead shot of the ocean that shows the miles-long wake the jet-skis made.

There's plenty of explosions, too. I guess there are still tons of 55-gallon drums filled with gasoline floating around the planet. Apparently the poor defenseless bystanders built their floating city atop them.

The movie ends with Kevin Costner winning. This doesn't surprise anyone who's seen a heavily promoted movie ever. Do you go to rent a Batman movie thinking "Maybe this is the one where Batman is defeated by the super-villain"? Of course not.