Is The Postman (1997) the Worst Move Ever Made?

Idk man.

But it’s pretty bad.

I’m not going to bother with a plot summary because you can get the gist from the Wikipedia page, but y’all? This movie is one of the biggest artistic fuckups we’ve ever seen. It can’t be the worst movie we’ve ever seen because 1) we’ve seen My Boss’s Daughter and 2) too much money was poured into this for it to be aesthetically ugly. But despite that mountain of cash spent on dolling up this mid-90s blockbuster, it still manages to be one of the most insufferable film experiences we’ve ever had. Hilarious, but completely inexcusable.

On paper, it’s all there. Rich source material that went on to inspire one of the best video games and the best Fallout game ever (Fallout: New Vegas, obviously). A composer known for his incredible scores, who’s often the best part of not-great big-budget films (James Newton Howard). A lead actor freshly out of two huge box office hits (Kevin Costner). Tom Petty. But somehow, everyone involved fumbled so hard that it’s hard to believe the movie was actually made.

For starters, it’s directed by the aforementioned lead actor, a man whose ego it so blinding that he still thinks this movie was good to this day. Perhaps this is why The Postman is three hours long, a runtime so unearned that every other minute feels like I’m in a wormhole of misery. The production team also seems to have made a concentrated effort to hire the worst possible supporting cast. It truly seemed like the vast majority of the performers had never been in front of a camera before (with the exception of maybe Lorenz Tate and occasionally Olivia Williams). I watched some of the worst line readings I’ve heard maybe ever, and I was in high school drama. It’s just as well, though—as director, Costner never entertains giving anyone remotely as much screen time as he gives himself. He also has a tendency toward directing with a seriousness that’s embarrassing to watch. During the film’s only (but needlessly prolonged) sex scene, I couldn’t stop picturing Costner calling cut mid-grind and coaching Williams on her, ah, performance. Peter Boyle’s (who went on to win a BAFTA!) editing only exacerbates the issue, with gauzy slo-mo sections just far enough apart to be jarring and hysterically out of place.

The script is unlistenable. The actors don’t do it any favors, but I will not let Eric Roth or Brian Helgeland off the hook for this one. It’s some of the most simultaneously self-serious and under-researched garbage I’ve ever seen in a high-budget production. Which is insane! Because Roth went on to be nominated for six Academy Awards, one of which was for Forrest Gump three years before The Postman, and most recently was last year’s adaptation of Dune! Helgeland literally won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for a movie he made THE SAME YEAR (L.A. Confidential)! I have no idea how two men with such evident grasp of the industry managed to produce such a narratively empty and artistically soulless manuscript. Seriously, were they tired? Was this them phoning it in?

BUT IT WASN’T JUST THEM. Even James Newton “Only-Good-Thing-About-the-Last-Airbender-Movie” Howard was fully asleep at the wheel for this one. The music is distracting most of the time and almost never fits the scenes. Worse, the music seems to be begging the audience to feel whatever the scene in question want them to feel—even though the script isn’t doing half the work it needs to to prompt an emotional response. It almost feels manipulative at times for how dissonant the scene and the music is.

There are a million things to say, and we say most of it in the episode. But suffice to say, there isn’t one element of this disasterpiece that escapes the overall insanity of The Postman, and I still can’t believe this made it past test audiences. What a nightmare of filmmaking.

You’ve gotta see it.