Yes, a movie destined to be as famous as "Ishtar" stars an unlikely cast of novice sci-fi undulates like Kevin "Green Tights" Costner and Dennis "Blue Velvet Tights" Hopper. It also stared some other people who will no doubt later regret their career moves in retrospect. But we didn't care! We saw Hollywood burn a whopping Two hundred Million dollars in this futuristic aquatic "wasteland warrior" epic in the spirit that put the "T" in "Max Max Beyond Thunderdome". You could smell the "Fishtar" from the trailers, and it's wasn't just plot!
The time is the future: all the icecaps have melted under the heat generated by deodorant and whipped cream propellant, and our stars are winning the America's Cup the hard way: War! Floating islands of a rag-tag team of refugees try to find the last colony know as "Earth"... oops, that's "BattleStar Galactica"... I mean, try to find dry land based on a peel-and-eat tattoo on the back of a little girl. It has action! It has romance! It has sharks! No, not SeaQuest, the movie, although I am sure you'll be wishing it was only that bad.
On July 28th, 1995 at Springfield Mall (in Springfield, VA), at 6:30 pm we started meeting in the Food Court below the theaters. We took in the 7:05 showing, and watched the world fill up.
To be truthful, the movie wasn't that bad. It wasn't that good, either. Any film that starts with someone whizzing in a glass jar on a sailboat pretty much describes the overall attitude this film has. Kevin was as wooden faced as he was in "Dance with Wolves" and "JFK", but this time he played a marine mutant who just wants to be alone with his aqua-man fantasies. He gets robbed several times only to end up with a little girl and her escort on some religious journey to "Dryland", a place where Dennis Hopper's character (the only likable villain in the flick) is steering his band of marauders on the Exxon Valdiz (think I'm kidding? Watch the "20th Century in-jokes" in 2015 and miss the old days). Of course "The Mariner" ("...he has no name so death can't find him...") falls in love with the little girl's caretaker, and they find Dryland by balloon and it has this John Wayne ending in the sunset, yatta yatta ya...
Predictable and long winded at times, Dennis Hopper was given all the good lines playing what he's famous for, a psycho with an attitude. But for you science buffs, here is a list of questions to tear apart the film with:
Don't waste your time with this flick. We should have brought beach balls and inflatable toys, because at least we'd have something to do while having our eyeballs scrubbed with this saltwater of a flick. Yick! I'm never going sailing again!