It’s always a tough sell when the introductory moments are more thrilling and large-scale than the climax.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 6, 2025

Dennis Hopper is hilariously evil, upstages Kevin Costner in every scene, and is a much-needed breath of fresh sea air.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 29, 2024

This one is a hydro-punk war of all against all...

| Nov 8, 2023

This should be called “What in the World."

| May 13, 2022

Waterworld has the epic scale, the grandeur, the towering oceanic shots, the boisterous (if sometimes misjudged) score and the vast, expensive sets. It just has no soul.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 24, 2022

There are hints that the editing ran amok in an all-out effort to reduce the running time to the present two hours.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 1, 2022

...kicks off with an exciting action sequence set aboard a man-made atoll that's certainly a breathtaking marvel of production design...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 1, 2021

My Kevin Costner gettin' all Mad Max on a turbo jet-ski beats your Eddie Murphy goin' through the motions.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 12, 2020

A very dignified production with some tremendously stimulating ideas that, yes, were not entirely well exposed in the movie that came to theaters two decades ago. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 23, 2019

Waterworld may not be a masterpiece, but it is certainly a shining example of large scale entertainment as only Hollywood can deliver.

| Jan 27, 2019

That Costner's antihero should be so fundamentally dislikable is entirely acceptable - after all, the Mariner's arc makes him an eternal outsider... - but that he should also be deadly dull is less so

| Jan 21, 2019

The unfairly maligned Kostner vehicle is much better than its reputation

| Jan 17, 2019

Offers a true extravaganza of epic proportions, populating its world with colourful characters and genuinely thrilling spectacle in equal measure.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 15, 2019

Costner... is totally humorless and as dreary as the landscape he travels. And the uninspired and often inane dialogue in Peter Rader and David Twohy's script doesn't help.

| Jun 12, 2018

Waterworld is a pretty damn good summer movie. There, I've said it...it's a breezy, clever entertainment with stirring effects.

| Feb 16, 2018

Waterworld is a mess masquerading as a movie. Setting out to do something startlingly new, it ends up stunningly familiar.

| Dec 14, 2017

It's borderline halfway decent. For the first 25 minutes or so, it's even actually good, in its derivative way.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 16, 2014

| Original Score: B | Sep 7, 2011

Regardless of faults, I embrace Waterworld as the pure matinee escapism it was intended to be, readily devouring the sci-fi excitement both Reynolds and Costner are happy to dish up.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 30, 2009

While it is true that time, and the obsessive culture of the Internet, has lessened Waterworld's "Fishtar" reputation to some extent, this is still one massively flawed film.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 22, 2009