WHAT A WORLD!

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It's pitch time at a movie-studio story conference, and two junior execs simultaneously jump up on the table and announce: "This one has everything! A desperate battle for survival! Mother Nature on a rampage! Heroic attempts to achieve the impossible! A psychological crap shoot with zillions at stake! And, at the center, a stark battle between two strong-willed men. It's got the potential for great movie melodrama. We call it The Making of Waterworld."

The location nightmare of Universal Pictures' adventure movie has been assiduously chronicled: how the Waterworld shoot in Hawaii was threatened by crew injuries and tsunami warnings; how a huge set sank toward the end of shooting; how the budget ballooned from $100 million to what now may be twice that; how the star, Kevin Costner, and the director, Kevin Reynolds, fought over various aspects of the film until Reynolds stormed out during the editing. Things can go wrong in movies; it's part of the gamble. On Waterworld, everything went wrong.

Costner and the editing team rushed frantically to get the movie into theaters for its opening this Friday. The studio spent about $12 million in the past six weeks on postproduction, including 11th-hour reshoots. Universal publicists insisted on calling these scenes "snippets," but by then defensiveness was rampant. At the film's press junket, each journalist was subject to two security checks before being allowed to enter the screening room. While the film played, edgy Universal brass stood along the walls of the theater to monitor the crowd's reactions. "Please," a studio publicist jokingly begged a reporter before the junket began, "just shoot me now."

Well, Universal has a right to have the blues. It was bad enough for the studio that a little Mad Max ripoff originally written for B-movie schlock king Roger Corman grew into the most expensive film ever made. It's worse that Waterworld, in its final ambitious form, provides a slow ride on very bumpy surf. So much effort expended, to so little effect.

It's the postgreenhouse future. The ice caps have melted, and the world is a vast briny sea. Most people live in giant docking stations, atolls, built on water. Prowling the sea like Poseidon's angels are the Smokers, bad guys led by the one-eyed Deacon (Dennis Hopper). The Smokers are looking for Enola (Tina Majorino), a 10-year-old with a map tattoo that may point the way to dry land. With her guardian Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the girl hitches a ride on the trimaran of an outsider--part man, part fish--known as the Mariner (Costner). If anyone in this scurvy world can help them, he can. Hey, he can do anything. As we see in the opening scene, he knows how to transform his urine into drinking water.

If Waterworld weren't an original script (by Peter Rader, David Twohy and at least four uncredited rewriters), it would be the kind of film that makes you want to read the book it was based on, to find all the rich detail the movie leaves out. For despite the toil of hundreds of artisans, Waterworld is a series of hints and promises, weird turns and blind alleys.